Developer of Russian operating system Astra Linux "NPO RusBITech" due to sanctions was unable to obtain the rights to popular fonts, including Arial, Verdana, Tahoma and Times New Roman. Kommersant reports this with reference to sources in the IT market.

The American Monotype Imaging, which owns the rights to the fonts, refused an agreement with the Russian company due to its cooperation with the Ministry of Defense.

According to the director of the NPO RusBITech center and the head of the Astra Linux OS development team, Yuri Sosnin, the companies reached a draft agreement that satisfied both parties, “despite the rather high cost of royalties,” but at the last moment the deal fell through. The reason for this was the found mention of the participation of NPO RusBITech in the MAKS international air show.

According to the publication’s sources, the American company was initially not too interested in the agreement and offered too high prices: 650 euros for each workplace Astra Linux with a font pack that would contain Times New Roman, Arial, Courier New, Tahoma and Verdana. For customers, the cost of an OS license would increase by this amount, the publication notes. The parties managed to negotiate down to approximately 130 euros for fewer fonts. At the same time, according to sources, for some companies Monotype Imaging quoted a price of only 3-4 euros per workplace.

The newspaper notes that in order to maintain the possibility of document flow with Windows, it was necessary to develop domestic analogues of fonts. NPO RusBITech together with the Paratype company have created analogues of Times New Roman - the publicly available fonts PT Astra Sans and PT Astra Serif. At the same time, in most regulatory documents of authorities and state corporations it is mandatory to use Times New Roman, which has become the standard for document flow in Russia, notes Yuri Sosnin. This, according to him, is one of the problematic issues that hinder active import substitution in the public sector.

As Andrey Chernogorov, CEO of the IT company Cognitive Technologies, told the National News Service (NSN), Russian users, thanks to the use of fairly popular open office packages, may not notice the “missing” of the popular Times New Roman font. “There are analogues, there is a very popular open office suite, it is supported by the community. Free fonts are used there. I personally know of several Times New Roman equivalents that are visually similar. At the same time, software packages, the same LibreOffice, if it opens a document with some paid font, then tries to replace it with a similar free one. And this is not a problem,” Chernogorov noted.

NPO RusBITech has been developing Astra Linux since 2010. The operating system is included in the register of domestic software. The company's main customers are the Ministry of Defense, the Federal Security Service, the FSB, the Foreign Intelligence Service, the Federal customs Service and the Ministry of Health.

Another serious obstacle has arisen in the import substitution of software in government agencies. Due to sanctions, the developer of the domestic operating system Astra Linux, NPO RusBITech, was unable to include popular fonts in it, including the standard Times New Roman for departmental documents. The rights to them belong to the American Monotype Imaging, which refused an agreement with the Russian company due to its cooperation with the Ministry of Defense. To maintain the possibility of document flow with Windows, it is necessary to develop domestic analogues of fonts, but this is fraught with problems with document compatibility.

At the beginning of December, the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications held a meeting with developers of domestic operating systems, at which a representative of JSC NPO RusBITech (Astra Linux OS) spoke about the refusal of Monotype Imaging, the copyright holder of the popular fonts Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, Times New Roman, etc., to sell a license for their use. This was reported to Kommersant by two sources in the IT market and confirmed by the director of the NPO RusBITech center and the head of the Astra Linux OS development team, Yuri Sosnin.

The companies negotiated to include fonts in Astra Linux and even came up with a draft agreement that suited both parties, “despite the rather high cost of royalties,” says Mr. Sosnin. The deal, according to him, fell through at the last moment: Monotype Imaging refused the contract, citing sanctions against Russian companies working in the interests of the Ministry of Defense. The reason for this was the found mention of the participation of NPO RusBITech in the work of the MAKS international air show.

Monotype Imaging did not respond to a request for comment. The American company was initially not too interested in the agreement and offered too high prices, say two Kommersant interlocutors familiar with the details of the negotiations, setting a price of €650 for each Astra Linux workstation with a font package that would include Times New Roman, Arial , Courier New, Tahoma and Verdana.

That is, for customers the cost of an OS license would increase by this amount. Then, according to Kommersant's sources, they managed to negotiate down to about €130 for a smaller number of fonts. "But it's still pretty high price“,” notes one of them. Another Kommersant interlocutor explains that for some companies Monotype Imaging quoted a price of only € 3-4 per workplace. “Apparently, they did not want to refuse and hoped that the price would scare them away,” he believes .

NPO RusBITech has been developing Astra Linux since 2010, the OS is included in the register of domestic software. According to the report of NPO RusBITech for 2014 (later data was not disclosed), the company’s main customers are the Ministry of Defense, the Federal Security Service, the Federal Security Service, the Foreign Intelligence Service, the Federal Customs Service, and the Ministry of Health. In 2014, the company entered into contracts worth RUB 1.7 billion.

As a result, NPO RusBITech was forced, together with the Paratype company, to develop analogues of Times New Roman - the publicly available fonts PT Astra Sans and PT Astra Serif. At the same time, in most regulatory documents of authorities and state corporations it is mandatory to use Times New Roman, which has become the standard for document flow in Russia, notes Yuri Sosnin. Perhaps, he suggests, no one thought about the need to purchase a separate license for this font due to the ubiquity using Windows, the composition and cost of which already includes Times New Roman.

“This is one of the problematic issues that hinder active import substitution in the public sector,” emphasizes Mr. Sosnin. In May 2016, the Minister of Communications Nikolai Nikiforov announced this in the State Duma. He noted that civil servants type texts in Times New Roman and submit documents in .doc format, which makes import substitution difficult.

Commercial Director of STC IT ROSA, which develops a domestic OS ROSA Linux, Sergey Alexandrov said that the company has not received and does not yet plan to request a license from Monotype Imaging. Instead, they use fonts from the freely distributed office suite LibreOffice. BaseALT and AltLinux also did not use Monotype Imaging fonts, choosing similar ones, notes Alexey Smirnov, advisor to the CEO of BaseALT and ex-CEO of AltLinux. But, he clarifies, if the font metrics in any OS are very different from those in Windows, it will be difficult for users of these OSs to exchange documents, since the layout will creep.

Maria Kolomychenko

Monotype Imaging, which owns the rights to the fonts Times New Roman, Arial, Courier New, Helvetica, ITC Franklin Gothic, Optima, Avant Garde, Palatino, FF DIN and others, refused to provide licenses for their use in Russian software. According to 3Dnews, the reason is US sanctions against Russia.

The fonts can reportedly be used on a single PC or for printing, but cannot be distributed to other PCs, used in electronic documents PDF/A, software and web applications.

As an alternative, Russian officials are encouraged to use a domestic operating system based on Linux and the same office packages, in which there are similar fonts, domestic or foreign, that do not have such strict restrictions. According to the text methodological instructions, distributed to companies, the new fonts that officials choose for use should be as similar as possible to the banned ones, in particular, PT Astra and Liberation. Using others is not recommended, as this will “break” the structure of the documents.

The portal adds that Times New Roman is the main font for the Russian armed forces. It is used in all documentation, as stated in the section “Rules for the preparation of official documents” in the “Officer's Handbook” for 2017.

Meanwhile, designers have found a replacement for the Times New Roman font. Thus, graphic designer Daria Kwon told Radio 1 that in Russia there are fonts that can be used instead of the usual Times New Roman. In particular, there are many aesthetically pleasing and easy-to-read Cyrillic fonts.

“In addition, the wonderful PT Sans and PT Serif fonts are free to use and were specifically designed to be public,” she noted. And Internet Ombudsman Dmitry Marinichev believes that the ban on the use of American fonts will become an incentive for the development of Russian fonts at the state level.

The Russian company was forced to create analogues of foreign fonts

The developer of the Russian operating system Astra Linux was refused a license to use several popular fonts, including the standard one for text files Times New Roman. The reason for the refusal was the fact that the development company collaborated with the Russian Ministry of Defense.

The American company Monotype Imaging, which owns the rights to fonts such as Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, Times New Roman and others, refused to enter into an agreement with the developer of the Astra Linux operating system - NPO RusBITech, Kommersant reports.

Despite preliminary agreements on the cost of the project, the deal fell through at the last moment. Representatives of Monotype Imaging said that due to sanctions they cannot cooperate with companies that work “in the interests of the Ministry of Defense.” The fact is that the developer of the domestic OS participated in the MAKS international air show, the newspaper writes.

Sources of the publication note that representatives of the Western company were initially not interested in cooperation with Russian programmers, setting an inflated price of €650 for each Astra Linux workstation with a font package. According to the newspaper’s interlocutor, the company did not want to refuse directly and hoped that high price will "scare off" Russian partners.

As a result, NPO RusBITech was forced to create, together with the Paratype company, analogues of foreign standard fonts. At the same time, the head of the Astra Linux OS development team, Yuri Sosnin, noted that in most regulatory documents of authorities and state corporations, the use of Times New Roman is mandatory. According to him, this is “one of the problematic issues that impede active import substitution in the public sector.”

The Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications is discussing the possibility of import substitution in the development of printed fonts. This issue was raised after the Linux platform banned the use of the traditional document font Times New Roman and some others. Their copyright holders did not give permission due to sanctions. The developers of the Russian operating system said that the Americans immediately raised the price. Is it possible to find a replacement for Western analogues?

These are the hieroglyphs - instead of a marriage certificate, a tax sheet or a form for issuing a foreign passport. Confusion in documents is one of the scenarios that will lead to the Times New Roman font, which is considered a mandatory norm in most government agencies.

“Basically, in order to submit a document or send it via internal departmental mail, you need to make it in this font. And it should appear from somewhere. But in fact, the font is only available in the operating room Windows system or Macintosh operating system. That is, if you do not have a computer with them, you cannot submit this document,” explains the general director of the New cloud technologies"Dmitry Komissarov.

But the fact is that government agencies switched to another system - Astra Linux Russian development. It provides a level of information protection up to the level of state secret. That is why it is used by the FSB and the Ministry of Defense. It is because of this that the American company Monotype Imaging refused an agreement with the developers of the operating system - the NPO RusBITech center. The terms of the contract, by the way, were already completely extortionate: the Americans demanded 650 euros for each font license installed system. Despite the fact that some companies only ask for 3-4 dollars.

“Over the past decades of using foreign software, we have become so accustomed to using foreign products, including fonts and formats, that we do not realize that we are paying for all this. We pay from the state budget,” says the director of the NPO center RusBITech", head of the Astra Linux OS development team Yuri Sosnin.

The Times typeface was developed for the British newspaper of the same name back in 1932. Experts are sure that this font continues to be used everywhere only out of habit. Although many analogues have been released for a long time. Thus, Russian designers from the ParaType company developed PT Sans and PT Serif fonts specifically for Russian departments. The latter is metrically absolutely compatible with Times New Roman - the same proportions, the same serifs. It also includes all the symbols of the Asian Cyrillic alphabet, the languages ​​of the small peoples of Russia, the ruble sign - in general, everything that was not in foreign typefaces. And all this can be downloaded and used completely free.

“First of all, government agencies began to actively use them, not in Russia, but in Great Britain. And the website , 10 was designed, and now they use PT Serif - our fonts,” notes Sergei Bobryshev, commercial director of the ParaType company.

British journalists even joked then that their government’s website was funded by the Kremlin. But Russian officials are not amused. In the Supreme Court, for example, orders not printed are considered invalid.

"Whatever quality software or fonts we did not offer, if in regulatory documents written using Times New Roman font, an official, an official, is obliged to do this. In fact, this creates an obstacle to import substitution,” Yuri Sosnin, director of the NPO RusBITech center and head of the Astra Linux OS development team, comments on the situation.

Yuri Sosnin has already repeatedly appealed to the Ministry of Communications with a request to urgently make changes to the standards. At a minimum, enter the phrase “Times New Roman font or equivalent.”