Russia has not joined the ODF Alliance

    “Russia is switching to ODF,” many online media outlets that did not quite understand the topic came out with such joyful headlines yesterday. They hastened to report that “Russia joined the OpenDocument Format Alliance (ODF Alliance) and, thus, joined the countries moving to the OpenDocument format (ODF) and open standards”, in connection with which “the Ministry of Information Technology and Communications of the Russian Federation an action plan for the implementation of open standards was approved. ”

    So happy for the heart of every supporter of open standards, the conclusion was made on the basis of a press releaseAn alliance that merely expressed support for the Russian government’s intention to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of implementing an open document format for office applications ISO / IEC 26300: 2006.

    Now experts are forced to clarify the situation .

    There was no talk of any plan for Russia's transition to ODF or Russia's entry into the Alliance. Although our country in the Alliance has long been represented by as many as five Russian companies, the relevant Russian authorities have not yet joined it.

    In addition, the action plan for the implementation of open standards, allegedly approved by the Ministry of Information Technology and Communications, is actually called“An action plan to promote the development of the Russian Federation, as well as the use of free software (open source) in government bodies .

    A document of this name was developed by the Working Group for the Study of the Development and Use of Free Software in the Russian Federation, created under the Ministry of Information and Communications, but it does not contain any plan for switching to the ODF format or another format for open documents, and, moreover, no one is this document on behalf of the Russian authorities have not yet claimed.

    “Information about Russia's plans to switch to open standards and technologies made a“ foreign trip ”and returned to Russia many times distorted,” said Yevgeny Altovsky, an expert at the UNESCO Informational for All WFP UNESCO, “the declarative intention to“ consider the issue ”has been transformed into an approved The Ministry of Information and Communications has an action plan, and the indirect mention of the ODF standard is Russia's accession to the alliance of the same name. ”

    As anyone can see, the “plan” is not so much about open document formats, but about open source software. “If some journalists bothered themselves by referring to the primary sources, it would not have worked out like in a famous joke: not into the lottery, but into cards, not a car, but twenty thousand, and not won, but lost,” Altovsky added.

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