Software for a special account

rabiakhatun

The initiative of the Ministry of Digital Development of the Russian Federation to legalize foreign software (SW) by transferring funds to a special account has raised a number of doubts among industry experts. In their opinion, good practical results can only be achieved with the help of transparent, understandable and logical mechanisms for business, and the proposed idea does not seem to be such.

The day before, the Vedomosti newspaper reported that Russian companies will be able to continue to legally use foreign software by transferring funds to a special account. Part of the funds from content writing service there will be spent on financing preferential IT loans for developers. This measure is provided for in the updated version of the bill on compulsory licensing of foreign software, which is being developed by the Ministry of Digital Development. The head of the ministry, Maksut Shadayev, spoke about this scenario in April at the annual meeting of members of the ARPP "Domestic Software".



According to him, what is actually being proposed is a transition from a model of prohibition to a model of taxation on the use of foreign software.

Ivan Panchenko, Deputy CEO of Postgres Professional and head of the Russian Software Integration Committee of the Domestic Software Association, told RSpectr that, on the one hand, forcing businesses to pay for foreign software is fairer than allowing them to use software for free. Otherwise, switching to domestic solutions would be economically disadvantageous.

On the other hand, it is strange to offer access to money from special accounts to foreign vendors - they not only voluntarily refused to receive money for their products, but also closed access to updates and stopped providing technical support. The expert believes that they should be required to compensate for losses.

Aerodisk CEO Vyacheslav Volodkovich noted in a conversation with RSpectr that

the benefits of the Ministry of Digital Development's initiative are not obvious

Software vendors often sell their products based on a long-term strategy of interaction with the client, calculating the volume of transactions and other personalized offers based on their requests, the expert said. He emphasized that prices for the same software for different companies can vary significantly.

It is also unclear how to justify the need for such payments: payment for software licenses includes such things as support and updates, which is not assumed under such a model, says Vyacheslav Volodkovich. He also pointed out the lack of clarity in how to explain to businesses that they must pay the state for pirated, and therefore not quite fully functional, software.

CorpSoft24 CEO Konstantin Renzyaev is confident that the mechanism will be completely inoperative and definitely unclaimed, because it is impossible to determine who uses the software of the departed companies, and it is unlikely that anyone will want to voluntarily make deductions to special accounts. With the development of domestic software, companies themselves will switch to legal products and will pay for them, since it is more convenient, but this software must reach a certain maturity, Konstantin Renzyaev said in an interview with RSpectr.

The proposed mechanism is primarily aimed at supporting domestic software manufacturers by leveling the economic conditions for obtaining rights, Vitaly Balanda, Consulting Director at Reksoft, noted in a conversation with RSpectr. This mechanism will also ensure the conditionally legal use of foreign software in cases where the customer is not ready to switch to domestic analogues.