The Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation has proposed to tighten the requirements for software that claims to be Russian. The department believes that only programs compatible with Russian equipment should be included in the Unified Register of Domestic Software.

Currently, there is a Unified Register of Russian Radio-Electronic Products (ERRRP) and a Unified Register of Russian Programs for Computers (ERRPVCH), which are under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Ministry of Digital Science, respectively. In order for the equipment to be included in the ERRRP, it must necessarily be compatible with Russian software. However, there is no such requirement for software, i.e. a product developed in Russia may be incompatible with domestic hardware. The Ministry of Industry and Trade believes that a similar condition for the compatibility of software and equipment should be provided for in the rules of the ERRPVCH.

«All software that ensures the operation of Russian equipment must be from the domestic register. We would welcome a similar decision from the Ministry of Digital Affairs on the software registry“, – the head of the radio-electronic department of the Ministry of Industry and Trade Vasily Shpak commented on this issue. As a reminder, at present more than 9000 products of different classes are included in the ERRPHCH.

Now the main requirement of the regulator for the inclusion of a product in the ERRPHR is that the rights to the program should belong to the domestic developer. Getting into the register has a number of advantages, including the priority of purchasing such products for the needs of government agencies and the possibility of obtaining tax incentives.

It should be noted that equipment manufacturers consider the initiative of the Ministry of Industry and Trade to be timely. “This measure will allow better incentives for Russian developers to port, i.e. adaptation of your software. Although currently a software stack for office and corporate use is actually ready for Baikal processors, there are many software products that are incompatible with the microarchitecture of Russian processors.“, – said Vitaly Bogdanov, Development Director of Baikal Electronics.

Software manufacturers believe that if the initiative of the Ministry of Industry and Trade is adopted, the Russian companies will have to make a lot of efforts to ensure the compatibility of their products with domestic processors. “The hardest part in this situation will have to those whose solutions are implemented on components from Microsoft and are focused on the Windows OS. It will be much easier for the creators of domestic software based on Linux to port it to another processor architecture.“, – says Roman Mylitsyn, director of innovations at Astra Linux Group.