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Putin Orders Russian Move To GNU/Linux
Glyn Moody writes "Vladimir Putin has signed an order calling for Russian federal authorities to move to GNU/Linux, and for the creation of 'a single repository of free software used in the federal bodies of executive power.' There have been a number of Russian projects to roll out free software, notably in the educational sector, but none so far has really taken off. With the backing of Putin, could this be the breakthrough free software has been waiting for?"
Linux really IS communist!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
With the backing of Putin, could this be the breakthrough free software has been waiting for?
I am pretty sure that Putin don't care about the freedom part of free software
Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
2011 WILL be the year of the [Russian] Linux desktop!
In Soviet Russia, Putin Linux you.
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
Really, is there anything wrong with wanting cheapness and robustness?
I am a true blue American and served my country during war time and ... yet... I find myself aligned more with Putin and his actions than with ANY political leader presently serving here in the USA. Perhaps, it is all publicity carefully crafted to make Putin look like something he is not, yet he seems to make so many choices that would parallel choices I would make if I were to be in his place.
What do other see that perhaps I am missing?
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
Did Putin really say "GNU/Linux" or just Linux?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
And in other news, hundreds of top programmers in Russia have been summarily convicted of tax evasion and embezzlement, and have been sentenced to 20 years hard labor in the Siberian software mines.
Actually, it's probably just the opposite. After the BSD backdoor story and after the Wikileaks cables, maybe Russia is concerned about using Microsoft Windows. Of course, Microsoft would *never* work with the NSA/FBI/CIA/Control/Chaos on back-doors that undermine the security of Russia... I can't imaging why they would want their own operating system...
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
Quick note: it's free software, not necessarily Linux. The actual 18-page document which constitutes Putin's order doesn't mention GNU, Linux or any specific piece of software. According to the plan, in 2011 they'll form a "package" of free software that they need and in 2012 the government will be running a repository with it, so presumably it's next year for decisions on which software specifically it's going to be. Of course, Linux is very likely.
As for motivation, one of the big things in Russia now is the idea of getting their own Silicon Valley (Skolkovo) up and running. They want their own stuff. And the document includes mention of looking into possibilities of how to support homegrown Russian software developers. While I'm sure they're happy to get away from an American company, this is also beneficial for Russia if it indeed wants to make its own stuff. There's obviously no commercial Russian OS that could be used as a basis for, well, anything, but building a successful Linux distro with state backing would be quite possible for them in the long-term.
Care to lay odds on Putin losing an election, ever?
Modern Russia is not so much post-Soviet as pre-Soviet; it's always been an autocracy and probably always will be. Or rather, it's long periods of autocracy punctuated by moments of sheer chaos. At least they've got a pretty good autocrat these days.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
It never was a Marxist dictatorship. It was always a government kleptocracy. Now it is less so, but Putin is moving them back to the level of government kleptocracy he's comfortable with. You can take the man out of the KGB, you cannot take the KGB out of the man.
No, but don't try to veil this as some sort of win for the ideals of FOSS when it's not. It's a political play and nothing more.
I am not a simpleton who believes USA GOOD RUSSIA BAD,
Logical fallacy, false dichotomy. USA BAD, RUSSIA BAD.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...free software has been waiting for?"
No. Free Software has not been waiting for anything.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Quick note: it's free software, not necessarily Linux
In fact, it's a cracked version of Windows 2000 that Putin found on a torrent site.
Another case of lousy foreigners stealing American technology. Just like they stole our spacecraft and jet technology. And radar. Next thing you know, they'll have stolen our sushi and kung foo techniques too! At least we are assured that pizza and coffee will forever be known as ours!
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
He's probably just playing hardball with Microsoft for a discount. You may notice that every time some country announces that it's moving to Linux, they inevitably announce, 3 months later, that they changed their mind and are sticking with Microsoft. Turns out if you're a country and you want a huge discount on Microsoft products, you just announce you're moving to Linux.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Novell eDirectory and ZENworks, Redhat RedHat Directory Server or 389 Directory Server, Apache DS, OpenLDAP Those are a few. Some are open source, others are not. Or it wouldn't be too tough to write their own, they have many with skills necessary to accomplish the task from scratch or reverse engineer what they like. They already have the source from Microsoft. Shouldn't be a big deal. IMHO.
A coworker of mine rolled out several years ago a robust, audit hardened user management framework for Unix systems that does very well in audits that Active Directory routinely fails. This sits on an estimated 20k-30k Unix based systems of multiple flavors.
AD does not have a built in framework for account validation (asking appropriate authorities, does this account still need to exist?). The role based concepts are relatively primitive. There is no capability to preserve the authorization record for granting access. All of those concepts have to be added on.
Actually deploying accounts, nothing beats actual local accounts. The trick is to have a robust agent that actually manages those accounts.
I've reviewed some of the various enterprise grade products, and none of them did as well as this self-built product.
Most products for user management simply have no mind to the audits, only pretty pictures. There is rarely even any logging of value.
AD is really nothing more than LDAP + Kerberos with a pretty GUI. It simply should never be considered adequate in and of itself for user management because it does not address several key requirements of the area.
"I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend unto the death your right to say it." -- Voltaire
AD does not have a built in framework for account validation (asking appropriate authorities, does this account still need to exist?). The role based concepts are relatively primitive. There is no capability to preserve the authorization record for granting access. All of those concepts have to be added on.
This is the job of a configuration/workflow management tool.
I've reviewed some of the various enterprise grade products, and none of them did as well as this self-built product....
AD is really nothing more than LDAP + Kerberos with a pretty GUI. It simply should never be considered adequate in and of itself for user management because it does not address several key requirements of the area.
Your self-built product is more than LDAP + Kerberos and a pretty GUI? You're lying to yourself if you think even a tiny fraction of UNIX deployments have THAT, whereas nearly ALL Windows Server deployments have AD. AD isn't the be-all-end-all, but "never considered adequate"? You are full of shit.
Actually deploying accounts, nothing beats actual local accounts.
WTF?
This is the real truth, Kerberos + LDAP is too hard for the average UNIX admin team so they fall back to local accounts, broken ass AD integration that is harder than it should be, or "LDAP + Kerberos" with less features than AD. OR they buy VAS.
1. UNIX systems are hard to integrate with AD
2. AD is "Kerberos + LDAP + DNS"
3. UNIX systems are hard to integrate with Kerberos + LDAP, and what's a service record?
I'm sorry man, but I can't even begin to picture a homemade AD replacement that accomplishes a fraction of what AD does with as little effort and is not a complete maintenance nightmare. You're talking about integrating a LOT of things that mix like oil and water on their own, with what, some shell scripts? Perl? PHP?
Unix systems are easy enough to integrate with Kerberos & LDAP, but the entire system sets you up for failure in a number of ways.
1. AFAICT, nothing uses DNS service records. So you have to configure your systems with the LDAP server by hand.
2. The "free as in speech, set up your systems however you like" attitude means that there's about a dozen different ways you can configure it. The only problem is, different configurations aren't necessarily compatible with each other and there's quite a few variants which sort-of-work most of the time until they break. Then you realise the documentation wasn't quite as complete as you thought, and certainly wasn't put together with any thought given to robustness.
3. Because of (2), the only reliable way to get it to work is you put together a known-good configuration, store it somewhere and religiously apply that every time. Ideally, you also need a way to distribute updates to everything in case you made a mistake.
If you don't do this (instead relying on yourself being able to follow either your own documentation or that from somewhere else every time), you wind up with small discrepancies and some servers working just fine, others rather less so.
This level of discipline is seldom seen in smaller organisations, and hence you wind up with Unix admins saying "LDAP is hard and prone to breakage".
AD (at least from the perspective of client systems) on the other hand, only has one configuration and that's the one that's applied when you join the domain. It's much harder to mess up, and so much more likely to be reliably rolled out.
And this is why GPL exists. Does your co-worker or company care to contribute back to the Linux community? After all, they have benefited greatly from the free stuff they gained in the first place.. it'd only be polite to package, document and release your system after all. (and I'm sure you could get a load of people to help with that, which would not only improve it for you but also get some pretty cheap and powerful advertising for your company too).