The Russian IT-community has been surprised at Russia to approve of using Office OpenXML, developed by Microsoft in cooperation with other companies, as an international standard. However, the most striking was the fact that the Russian representatives proposed no remarks and supplements to the standard.

A few days ago in Minkomsvyazi Russia held a meeting with the head of the Russian Federation Minkomsvyazi IO Schegolev and Director of the European division, vice-president of the corporation Red Hat Werner Knobliha.During the meeting it was announced that the development of free software in Russia - one of the main directions of the Ministry.

Russian OS is to be installed on every school computer in Russia by 2009. Furthermore, every pupil will get the opportunity to operate the applied software produced in Russia, Leonid Reiman, acting Minister of Communication stated at a press conference. Experts and market participants consider the terms within which software is to be developed quite reasonable. According to Mr.

The visit of the Free Software Foundation leader Richard Stallman to Russia in March 2008 could be canceled because of the problems with too-late visa application. A part of the trouble appeared to be Stallman's rejection to get help from Victor Alksnis, the State Duma member and the only Russian politician who helps Free Software and Open Source movements in Russia.

Russia is rapidly turning into open source's best-kept secret. I wrote about plans to roll out free software to all schools; more recently, there has been talk about creating a Russian operating system based on Fedora. And now there's this...

Russia may have bowed out of the Cold War, but with the release of ALT Linux Personal Desktop 4.0, Russia has become a contender in the Linux arms race. Equipped with KDE 3.5.7, OpenOffice.org, Firefox, a modern infrastructure, and good multimedia support, ALT Linux is a potential weapon of mass adoption.

Russia's state anti-monopoly service launched a probe of Microsoft Corp over cutbacks in supplies of the Windows XP operating system in Russia, it said on Thursday.

The company Microsoft Rus together with Intel and Volnoye Delo Fund intends to double the number of school PC in Russia in the near future. The software installed on computers within the charity project launched by the fund will cost four-fold less than within the existing education projects, i.e. MS Office + Windows XP will be supplied for $3.

"Richard Stallman, who started the free software movement, visits Russian in March 2008. The legendary programmer plans to give several lectures for students and specialists and hold a press-conference. Mr. Stallman is known to be the initiator of his visit to Russia. Experts relate his arrival to a boom in the domestic free software market..."