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Unified register of Russian programs and GPL. My five cents

A few days ago an article was published on Habré that caused a certain resonance. A brief retelling of the article was led by CNews, and from there the thesis of banning the GPL and MPL in the Unified Register migrated to the Wikipedia article .

The original article eloquently stated that the guidelines for preparing applications for the inclusion of software in the Unified Registry are somewhat dissonant with filling the Unified Registry with various Linux clones. Whether or not there is a contradiction between the recommendations and which software is included in the Unified Register, let lawyers comment, and I'm not a lawyer, so I’ll just share some facts from the same field.

My article is intended only to state some facts. These facts are the result of a selective analysis of entries in the Registry, as well as fluent googling. A more thorough analysis of the Unified Register, however, for completely different parameters, I did here . I note that I do not want to give any estimates or interpretations, and I can not, because I do not have such competencies.

Fact 1. Methodical recommendations (by the way, on the TsKIT website are named “Methodological recommendations for preparing applications for inclusion of software in the Unified Register”, and in the protocol by which they are approved - “Methodological recommendations for the examination of applications for including information about software in the Unified Register” ) were approved on December 26, 2019, and on January 10, 2020, the Ministry of Communications and Mass Communications issued Order No. 4 , which included in the Unified RegisterGeneral Purpose Operating System Sagittarius .

So what? Nothing, it’s just written in the Technical Specifications of the Sagittarius OS that “the product is designed as an operating system of the Debian Linux family operating on a hardware platform with the processor architecture x86-64.” Technical conditions, meanwhile, are on the page, a link to which is given on the OS page in the Unified Register.

We’ll turn on the fantasy and two options will appear before us: the expert who checked the application, looked at the documents and put the software in the Registry, or didn’t look at the documentation and did not recognize the “Debian Linux family of OS” in person ...

Fact 2. Again, go over the Registry a bit and find it has a general purpose operating system "OSnova"included in the Register on November 19, 2019. Official documents of the OS again in the person of the Operator's Manual do not hide that the basis of the OS is New - Linux. Can this be attributed to the fact that the software was entered in the Register even before the approval of the Recommendations?

Fact 3. Symbolically, but at number 1, the Red Database Database Management System is listed in the Registry , which prides itself on the fact that its core is built on the basis of Firebird. And Firebird, by the way, is released under the MPL. Wherever you stick these GPLs and MPLs everywhere. Suspiciously .

Fact 4. Extremely interesting instance - Operating system Lotus (edition for servers and workstations). This OS is interesting in that on its page in the Register, in the information about the exclusive right, the following text is given:

In a spoiler, the manufacturer of the Lotus OS discloses the idea that the restrictive provisions of free licenses such as GPL apply only to a derivative work resulting from processing, with the exception of the type of processing - adaptation
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In my opinion, it’s an extremely curious text, most of all it is curious that such a justification was completely arranged by the Expert Council.

Fact 5. The recommendations themselves advise: “Prepare copies of documents confirming that the exclusive right to the claimed software in the whole world and for the entire duration of the exclusive right belongs to you, for example, the Certificate of Rospatent”. Registration of a computer program is carried out on the basis of Article 1262 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation . Moreover, as part of the application, “deposited materials identifying the computer program” are submitted, and according to paragraph 6 of the same article 1262 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation “Information entered in the Computer Program Register or in the Database Register is considered reliable, since it has not been proved otherwise. The responsibility for the accuracy of the information provided for state registration lies with the applicant. ”

For some reason, I have an analogy between identifying materials for a computer program and key software components, which "should not be distributed under the terms of such licenses as GPL, MPL." It becomes clearer the requirement of paragraph 5 "a" of the Rules for the formation and maintenance of a unified registry of Russian software which requires "the exclusive right to software throughout the world and for the entire duration of the exclusive right".

Fact 6. In Vedomostiback in 2017, they discussed the problems of the Russian OS operating system. One of the reasons for not including the OS in the Registry was that Rostec granted only a universal public license (GPL) for the developed operating system. It also pointed to the insignificant contribution of the OS developers to its improvement in comparison with the ones taken as the basis for CentOS and Fedora.

To summarize. The Registry has software that contains components licensed under the GPL and MPL. Moreover, such software was included in the Register after the approval of the Recommendations.
Apparently, when included in the Register, the totality of the contribution and licensing is analyzed: if there is a significant contribution and exclusive rights to it, then welcome to the Register. In this regard, I can not disagree with the comments on the article, the addition to which I am writing:Comment 1 , Comment 2 .

I do not know if the Recommendations really prohibit any use of the GPL in the software submitted to the Registry, or is the question relevant only for Linux-based operating systems. In the same way, I don’t know if the experts really included in the Software Registry with components under the GPL and MPL licenses for years, so that at one fine moment they would issue recommendations on the basis of which it would be possible to remove the same software from the Registry.

We can confidently say that there are inaccuracies that leave a field for interpretation. It is hoped that these inaccuracies will be eliminated over time.

Finally, I would like to hope that a week of articles on the Unified Register starts on Habr and someone professionally covers the issue from a legal point of view

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