Russia plans to support its own open source code hosting platform and provide funds to support the open source software industry

According to information provided by the Russian Ministry of Digital Development (full name: Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation), the department has made recommendations to the Russian government to create a national open source software repository.

This project is planned to be launched at the end of April, and the Russian government will provide 1.39 billion rubles (approximately RMB 107 million) in funds to support the most popular projects in the field of open source software or to create new IT products.

If developers/developers want to apply for this part of the financial support, they must accept the relevant open source terms, open source the product code and host it in the Russian open source software repository.

In terms of open source repositories, Russia is not planning to build a replica of GitHub that is completely run by the government. Instead, it chooses the existing code hosting platform in Russia. That is, developers who receive financial support must open source their code in this selected code hosting platform. Available to all developers.

After the war broke out, GitHub banned the accounts of some Russian companies, banks and developers, which made Russia think again that it should establish its own open source repository. This idea originally came out in 2020, but at the time Russian IT experts believed that developers There was no need for this and therefore the relevant proposal was rejected.

It has been four years since the Russian Ministry of Digital Development seemed to have thought about the open source software industry in Russia. Whether it is supporting open source software or supporting open source code hosting platforms, it will be beneficial to the development of the Russian IT industry.