As the VChK-OGPU learned, the AlterOffice software solution from the notorious Nizhny Novgorod company Almi Partner sensationally won the competition for the supply of an office package for Transneft PJSC worth more than 576 million rubles. Interestingly, this is not their first victory in tenders of departments and companies with government participation.
What is it about this supposedly Russian development that captivates near-state structures? The fact that AlterOffice is based on the free open-source LibreOffice package has been discussed by IT market experts for a long time, emphasizing that it is strange to call a plagiarized Western product an import substitution. Formerly AlterOffice package excluded from the register by employees of the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications due to suspicions of selling the open-source package LibreOffice under the AlterOffice brand, but by a court decision it was returned to the register. For some reason, this glaring fact does not bother officials. Sources of the Cheka-OGPU noticed that literally a few days before the end of the last competition, in which several developers took part, adjustments were made to the terms of reference in favor of allowing the AlterOffice solution to participate, which did not meet a number of technical requirements. In particular, an analysis of the company’s financial indicators indicates the absence of serious investments in software development; the average medium-term number of Almi Partner employees is 31 people. At the same time, the salaries of “programmers” there do not exceed 22 thousand rubles (this is almost the minimum wage in the region) with a market range of 200-400 thousand rubles! And in the narrow community of software developers, no one even knows the team of creators of the AlterOffice package. IT market experts note that it is unrealistic to make competitive Enterprise development in 3 years with such low-power resources; it requires 100 programmers and 5 years of intensive work. But here, too, the organizers of the competition played along with the desired company: the Enterprise version, which appeared in the technical specifications, was replaced with a desktop solution, which specifically includes AlterOffice,
According to the VChK, it is very likely that the LibreOffice developers may at any time ban the use of their solution in the Russian Federation in connection with SVO and initiate an investigation into the presence of their modules as part of Russian software. This will put companies using the LibreOffice source code in an extremely difficult position.
Who in our country is interested in imaginary import substitution in the software field? The editors will monitor the development of the situation.
What is it about this supposedly Russian development that captivates near-state structures? The fact that AlterOffice is based on the free open-source LibreOffice package has been discussed by IT market experts for a long time, emphasizing that it is strange to call a plagiarized Western product an import substitution. Formerly AlterOffice package excluded from the register by employees of the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications due to suspicions of selling the open-source package LibreOffice under the AlterOffice brand, but by a court decision it was returned to the register. For some reason, this glaring fact does not bother officials. Sources of the Cheka-OGPU noticed that literally a few days before the end of the last competition, in which several developers took part, adjustments were made to the terms of reference in favor of allowing the AlterOffice solution to participate, which did not meet a number of technical requirements. In particular, an analysis of the company’s financial indicators indicates the absence of serious investments in software development; the average medium-term number of Almi Partner employees is 31 people. At the same time, the salaries of “programmers” there do not exceed 22 thousand rubles (this is almost the minimum wage in the region) with a market range of 200-400 thousand rubles! And in the narrow community of software developers, no one even knows the team of creators of the AlterOffice package. IT market experts note that it is unrealistic to make competitive Enterprise development in 3 years with such low-power resources; it requires 100 programmers and 5 years of intensive work. But here, too, the organizers of the competition played along with the desired company: the Enterprise version, which appeared in the technical specifications, was replaced with a desktop solution, which specifically includes AlterOffice,
According to the VChK, it is very likely that the LibreOffice developers may at any time ban the use of their solution in the Russian Federation in connection with SVO and initiate an investigation into the presence of their modules as part of Russian software. This will put companies using the LibreOffice source code in an extremely difficult position.
Who in our country is interested in imaginary import substitution in the software field? The editors will monitor the development of the situation.
The Nizhny Novgorod company Almi Partner intends to use the court to achieve the return of its office package to the Register…
“ВЧК ОГПУ”
