Free and Open Source Software in Russia: Government Support and the Impact of the Import Substitution Policy

Many researchers, programmers, businesspeople, and officials in different countries around the world see Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) as the best possible model of software development. In Russia, the interest towards FOSS started to grow in 2010 when the government announced the plan for the transition of federal authorities and federal budget institutions to the use of free software. However, after its cancellation in 2015, the government attention to FOSS seemed to decrease. The new focus and the primary trend in IT-industry in Russia is the policy of import substitution of software from abroad (launched in 2015). It was rationalized by the difficult political and economic situation, sanctions, unstable exchange rate, and an attempt to depend less on foreign countries. The main idea is to replace all the international software used in government institutions and government-owned companies by domestically produced and, moreover, to motivate private companies to follow this strategy. Free and Open Source Software is seen as the primary tool to achieve these goals. The research question is, how does the government support FOSS in Russia, and how does the national import substitution policy contribute to supporting it. The answer to this question is essential, and it is missing in the academic literature due to the novelty of the matter and lack of general academic interest to FOSS in Russia. The hypothesis is that this policy facilitates the development of FOSS and triggers an increase in government support for it.