Colonel Victor Alksnis, Russian nationalist and free software advocate, has died at the age of 74

/h/slavshit crossover post!

All translations achieved with Google Translate:

Former People's Deputy of the USSR and former State Duma deputy Colonel Viktor Alksnis died, his daughter Irina Alksnis reported.

«My dad, Victor Imantovich Alksnis, passed away », – she reported on the Telegram channel «Black Colonel »who led Alksnis himself.

In October 2019, Alksnis was diagnosed with cancer, since then he underwent several operations.

It is reported that on the night of December 30, Alksnis had a «hemorrhagic stroke », he «fell into a deep coma ».

His daughter thanked the staff of the Mytishchi Regional Clinical Hospital, where Alksnis was «the last three days ». «They not only did everything for dad, but also helped us, his family, to cope with the grief that fell on us », – the message says.

In my place Telegram Irina Alksnis apologized «for the long silence ». «I didn't even write articles these weeks. Family Force Majeure », – the message says.

Viktor Alksnis was born in 1950 in the Kemerovo region, he was the grandson of the USSR Deputy People's Commissar of Defense for Aviation, the head of the Red Army Air Force, second-rank commander Jacob Alksnis. In Riga he graduated from the Riga Higher Military Aviation Engineering School named after Ya. Alksnis.

Political activity started in 1988, when he publicly spoke out against the Popular Front of Latvia, which aimed the withdrawal of Latvia from the USSR. He was a people's deputy of the USSR, a deputy of the Supreme Council of Latvia. Actively advocated the preservation of the USSR. He took part in the October events of 1993 on the side of the Congress of People's Deputies. In 2000 and 2003 he was elected to the State Duma.

This guy wanted to make Russia independent from western operating systems, so he invited a bunch of open-source/free software guys into the Russian State Duma to promote their work, including the co-founder of ReactOS, Aleksey Bragin:

During round table on the problems of developing domestic software, agreements were reached with participants on the continuation of contacts and meetings to obtain the necessary information and develop a common position.

Today, as part of these arrangements, I had a meeting with ReactOS project manager Alexei Bragin in the State Duma.

Alexey demonstrated to me the achievements of the enthusiastic developers of ReactOS, spoke about his plans.

I got acquainted with the operating system with interest, saw and learned a lot of new things.

Personally, I made sure that Total Comander and Mozilla Firef*x work perfectly under ReactOS.

Alexei and I agreed on further cooperation.

[PHOTOS GO HERE]

These photos were taken by my order by my assistant E. Oderova to my personal camera. I transfer these photos to the public domain and for public use.

Those wishing to participate in the implementation of the project to create the ReactOS operating system can contact Alexei Bragin through the website https://www.reactos.ru/ru/index.html

Similar meetings will be held with other Russian software developers.

At one point, he even invited Richard Stallman to Moscow:

In terms of the visit — meetings with the public, supporters of open source software, students, officials, etc. It is planned that Stollman will even perform in the State Duma.

The founder of the modern concept of free software, the GNU project, the Foundation for Free Programs and the League for Freedom of Programming, the legendary Richard Stollman, will come to Moscow. He had already given prior consent and promised to make time for a visit in late February – early March 2008. Most likely, the visit will last five to six days. In terms of the visit — meetings with the public, supporters of open source software, students, officials, etc. Perhaps Stollman will even perform in the State Duma, as he arrives at the invitation of Deputy Viktor Alksnis.

The initiative to invite Stollman to Moscow was made by Vasily Leonov, one of the Russian open source activists who lived in the United States for a long time and is personally acquainted with Richard Stollman. It is Vasily who will organize the visit, so you can turn to him with specific offers right now.

«For 15 years of participation in the Linux community (my code is at the core of each copy of Linux), I have a good understanding of formal and informal approaches, numerous business contacts in the United States, where I lived for several years in the 90s, — writes Vasily Leonov. — With a purely utilitarian all-market sector S who will take part in his fair alteration — will not regret it. Both at the level of individual and public, and moral and psychological and, of course, state. Russia as a whole, for example. On the objective side, this redistribution is inevitable, since there is nothing to object to significant savings on licensing in the long run.

Maybe it would be worth organizing an international forum on the topic "For Free Software and Information Security of Russia ". To invite Stollman — for a long time he was not in Russia, for a long time I did not see him. He takes part in public life with pleasure, some criticize him for this, but after his contribution he can already do what he wants and how he wants. A very strong personality, an unconditional supporter of genuine freedom and justice ».

Подробнее: https://www.securitylab.ru/news/306059.php

But Stallman later pussied out apparently due to Alksnis being too based for him.

The guy he co-founded his free software advocacy organization with is the same guy who, no joke, managed to get fined in Russia for pirating Windows OS:

When high school principal Alexander Ponosov took delivery of 16 computers, he must have felt it was a real accomplishment for a school in a tiny Russian village. It never occurred to him that on that day in August 2005 he became a criminal.

"I was not very well versed in computers back then," said Ponosov in a phone interview with CBS News. "I went to my friends who knew more about PCs than I did and they told me that PCs today come with pre-installed software. So, we took the computers."

The computers for the school had been supplied by the regional administration. But in his village of Sepych, about 1,000 miles from Moscow, Ponosov did not know that the Microsoft software installed on the computers was pirated. Now, the bewildered director is facing up to 5 years in prison and more than $10,000 in fines for copyright violation.

Russia has been extensively criticized for its failure to protect intellectual property rights. The trade group Business Software Alliance estimates the level of pirated software in Russia at 83 percent. A wide range of pirated CDs and DVDs are openly sold by street traders and small shops in any Russian city. You can even buy them on the sidewalk in front of the famous Lubyanka headquarters of the Federal Security Service, the former KGB.

In trying to improve Russia's image, authorities have begun raiding illegal production facilities, arresting shop owners, and now, going after end-users of pirated materials. Alexander Ponosov believes there is a simple reason why they singled out the director of a village school in an attempt to uproot piracy.

"It is a classic Russian mentality," he says. "They do not touch the oligarchs because oligarchs have got money and can bite back. They go after someone poor and toothless, like us."

The school head has been officially charged with violating copyright law and using pirated software. His case has already drawn a wide public outcry and even made some political forces step in and support the beleaguered teacher.

"A rural high school teacher can hardly be considered the main intellectual pirate in this country," says Mikhail Seslavinsky, head of the Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communications. "Once you start punishing users (of pirated software) half of the country's population, including the law enforcers themselves, may end up behind bars."

A Microsoft representative speaking with CBS News did not sound bloodthirsty: "I had to attend the hearings as it is required by the law – I was summoned to the court by the investigators in order to assess the damage incurred by Microsoft," said Alexei Potapov. "I had to give a retail price of the legal versions of the Microsoft products, installed on the school computers in Sepych, which was slightly over $10,000."

Microsoft has decided not to file a civil lawsuit against Ponosov "because we understand well he is just an ordinary school master and he runs an ordinary Russian school," said Potapov. "However, no one has the right to break the law."

Alexander Ponosov insists he is innocent.

"This whole campaign may have started off as a crusade against software piracy. But as time went by, law enforcers realized they were unable to find the real perpetrators of the crime — those who illegally copied and distributed the pirate Microsoft products. And then the solution presented itself: go after an easy target. So, they picked us," Ponosov said.

In attempting to show their commitment to rule of law, Russian authorities have instead created, in Ponosov's words, a farce.

The hearings resume on February 12. The outcome of this case will eventually determine whether millions of pirate software users in Russia could be considered criminals.

So yeah, all in all, a great loss for the open-source/free software community