Draft Law on NGOs May Affect Software Promotion in Russia – Kommersant

The law adopted by the State Duma on mandatory registration with the Ministry of Justice of foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) will actually prohibit specialists from participating in any international projects developing free software (open source), the source said. RBC in the IT market. The Ministry of Digital Development promised to prepare clarifications on this topic.

Open source is software distributed under a free license agreement. Within its framework, the user is allowed to use the program for any purpose not prohibited by law. He also gets access to the source code of the program to study, modify or make changes, unlike proprietary, that is, non-free software, owned by the copyright holder.

As the interlocutor of RBC explained, most of the large open source projects are registered as non-profit organizations so that they can legally accept and dispose of donations. “Under the threat of criminal prosecution under the new articles, not only ordinary users of free software projects, but also all employees of Russian companies developing and implementing such software under the import substitution program, since doing this without participating in upstream (upstream is a higher level of development that the original the authors of the software, the source code. – “b”) is impossible – Russian developers are actively sharing some of the developments with the original projects, and also report the errors found, ”he says.

A representative of the Ministry of Digital Development assured that there is no direct ban on the participation of Russians in international free software projects in the law. “In order to properly apply the norms and reduce the risks of their enforcement, joint clarifications with the Ministry of Justice on the procedure for applying these new norms are planned,” he added.

Amendments to the law “On non-profit organizations” were introduced in April by deputies of the inter-factional commission to investigate the facts of foreign interference in the internal affairs of Russia. In the explanatory note, the authors pointed out that although there is a regulated procedure for registering foreign NGOs in the legislation, this does not exclude their work “both on their own and with the involvement of individuals or legal entities” in circumvention of existing norms.

Details – in the material “Kommersant” “If you ever want”.

Laura Keffer