Boris Kharas: Russia does not have its own full-fledged commercial operating system for computers

Comment by Chairman of the Union of Software Developers of the Fuel and Energy Complex Boris Kharas

How many times have they told the world that free cheese happens in mousetraps. I have spoken frequently and at various venues about the risks of using open source software. Some of the risks I mentioned have become a reality. As it became known, in Russia support of corporate users of OS Linux Ubuntu is stopped. The developers have joined the anti-Russian sanctions. As part of his anti-Russian "protest" Canonical has deprived all Russian companies using its operating system of the opportunity to receive its commercial services. The same applies to paid technical support – it is now also unavailable to Russian enterprises.
In Russia, the specified operating system is used and was considered as import-independent. Obviously, it has become dependent on its developer community outside of Russia.

Thus, two important issues need to be highlighted.
First. Russia does not have its own full-fledged commercial operating system for computers. Russia is counting on the Linux operating system, but all versions of this operating system have the so-called free software as their kernel. I would like to hear the position of the Ministry of Digital Development on this issue.
Second. Obviously, that it is extremely risky to migrate production information systems to the so-called free distributed software (OpenSource). This software is not de facto free, and there are great risks of getting with this "free software" undocumented capabilities, the use of which in technological networks, for example, can lead to disasters. And this is not a horror story.

As a result of a special operation, software with undocumented capabilities got into the technological network of the Iranian Atomic Corporation at the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz in 2010 led to an exit from building 1,500 centrifuges, which as a result set Iran's nuclear program back two years. The case is well described in open sources, the virus created for this was called Stuxnet. This is the first known computer worm that intercepts and modifies the information flow between Simatic S7 programmable logic controllers and workstations of the Simatic WinCC SCADA system from Siemens. The process control system through which the virus entered was made by Siemens.