Hacker in Law (bablaw blogger) reprints an open letter to the President in defense of genuine software freedom

As LiveJournal has a blog bablaw , which the author also calls himself the pseudonym Hacker in Law. This is one of the external bloggers most cited on Habrahabr, and his views are also very popular here: for example, on December 22, pointing to his open letter to President Medvedev , I earned 103 pluses (and in addition - the right to replenish Habrahabr with another invitee).

From my own experience knowing your well-deserved affection for this blogger, today I will point you to another open letter to President Medvedev - this time not written by this blogger himself, but simply reprinted by him today: This is a letter from readers of Linux forums. An open letter was posted by its authors on the Ubuntu Linux forum . The authors of the letter intend to appeal to the President to prevent the upcoming strangulation of free software in Russia - primarily tax strangulation. The letter, in particular, states:

The economic crisis makes saving primarily small companies, which , unlike state-owned corporations, cannot receive adequate economic support. Many of these companies are moving to using free software. Instead of support from the state , we see attempts to state fiscal authorities to collect taxes from these free products.

Moreover, the so-called experts are involved, equating free software to gifts and justifying the need to pay from ittaxes. (Appendix 3). Following this logic, all citizens who have installed for free, for example, FireFox (developed by http://www.mozilla.org/ ) or “Taxpayer YL” (developed by FSUE GNIVTS Federal Tax Service of Russia) must pay a gift tax. This interpretation of the laws is nonsense in our opinion and contradicts common sense and generally accepted world practice.

I must say right away: this is not the only of the nasty things listed in that letter that require prevention; not the only, but the most egregious.

Hacker in Law commented on the efforts of the tax authorities (in his blog post “ Happy New Year! And say goodbye to open licenses ... ”) in the following words (selectively quote):

... blaming commercial organizations for “giving” when concluding a free license agreement is somehow not human ... Not to mention the tax consequences for an unfortunate person who received a free license ... Apparently, the tax will determine the cost of Linux by the cost of a comparable configuration of Windows or MacOS ...

There is also a copy of the correspondence between State Duma deputy V. Kushchev and A. L. Kudrin, Minister of Finance of the Russian Federation , and A. L. Makovsky, First Deputy Chairman of the Private Law Research Center , regarding all this tax rip off.

In order for all users of Linux and Firefox not to be taxed with a new and unprecedented tax, an open struggle for their rights is necessary, a truly civil society is needed.

We can start by drawing attention to this open letter, we can start by displaying a link to it directly on the Habrahabr main page.