The Russian platform "Aurora" and the future mythical Android from Mintsifra

Hello.

Some situations make me cringe, they put me into a state of slight frenzy.

It’s not even the absurdity of what is happening that hurts, but the factthat publicly there is a substitution of concepts, and the participants of the performance act against all of us and follow not the interests of the country, no matter how loud it may sound, but their own or, on the contrary, the interests of those who can be safely called enemies of Russia. I don't like to scatter labels, but what is happening today in connection with the Aurora platform, and this is not only an operating system, cannot be called anything other than sabotage.

Racked my head why someone at the end of 2022it took fiction that Rostelecom, which owns the Aurora platform, allegedly needs an amount of half a trillion rubles in order to develop it. The publication with this fiction was widely distributed, wrote about the absurdity of this in a separate text.

Towards the northern Aurora - about the Russian platform for half a trillion rubles

What are the problems facing the Russian platform Aurora, why is it more than a replacement for Android, who will pay for it, and where does half a trillion budget money come from.

Now it becomes clear why and to whom it was necessary.The Ministry of Digital Transformation threw Aurora out of the public sector digitalization budget, it was assumed that the system could receive 22 billion rubles for several years, they would have gone to adapt the software for the Russian operating system. From now on, the state believes that Rostelecom should develop “its own” platform on its own, on its own.

This dialectic confuses me a little, becauseRostelecom is a state corporation, it performs many tasks that are important for the state, and there is no doubt about it. The acquisition of Sailfish, the change to the tasks of Russia - all this was also a state task, for which, one way or another, we spent the money of our country. And now, for some reason, the Ministry of Digital Development considers this to be a private initiative of a company that, in their eyes, is not formally connected with the state. What?

Preparations for the destruction of the Aurora in the public field are in full swing, for example, MP Anton Gorelkin spoke on this topic at the end of the year.

Either I did not understand the question, or something else,Let me quote: “Besides, it is not entirely clear why Aurora is claiming such large-scale state support. There are other Russian developments - and maybe it makes sense to stimulate all market participants equally? At the same time, companies must provide most of the funding themselves, so that the best product is determined as a result of healthy competition.”

There is not a single mobile operating room in Russiasystems other than Aurora. None. There are presentations of the plans of different companies, there are false ideas in the style of “give me money, and then I will do something in a year or two.” But there are no alternatives, they simply do not exist.

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What market participants are we talking about?Who are these invisible creators of operating systems who have not yet taken place and have not made any efforts so that their creations appear somewhere in the public field? There are none, they simply do not exist.

Now about the logic of Aurora support.It seems that it is so obvious that it is even somehow embarrassing to discuss it aloud. The state corporation bought someone else's development, brought it to mind for the tasks of Russia and the public sector. There are pilot projects, they have proved the viability of the system, that it works. The next stage is the widespread implementation, the creation of that same ecosystem. And here it is necessary that the state support the transfer of part of the IT systems, include support for Aurora. At the moment, this money goes to the development of software for iOS (very funny, given the level of sanctions imposed by Apple on Russia), as well as Android. For the consumer market, this is important, there is no doubt about it - we do not plan to use devices on Aurora for the consumer market yet. But we must start with the fact that officials and security forces will be able to get a device that will be beyond the control of America, the data from which will not be leaked to the country that is fighting Russia on all fronts. And instead, the question is asked, why should we finance our own system, which is already ready and in place. Moreover, it is not to finance its development (this was done by Rostelecom), but rather its widespread introduction everywhere in the state, and this is not the task of the same Rostelecom.

That is, instead of removing barriers todistribution of Aurora, our deputies and the Ministry of Digital Development act as a united front and try to limit the working, existing mobile system as much as possible. How to call it? Only one word comes to mind - sabotage.

Let's see what alternative we havesuggest why they want to slow down the development of Aurora as much as possible. Allegedly, a number of Russian companies are ready to gather in a consortium and create their own version of the operating system based on the open version of Android. That is, we take Android AOSP, then we create a replacement for Google services, and voila, we have our own system. Sounds healthy? Only for a person who is as far as possible from the Android device market and does not understand what pitfalls await developers here. Yandex has already tried to create its own version of Android, but failed in full, since all the company was able to do was create a crooked and poorly working shell for Android. None of his system worked. However, in Yandex, in the end, they could not even master the creation of their smartphone, the project was ingloriously closed. And today it is the only company that has any experience in developing something on Android, which they tried to make Russian. The experience, as we see, is completely unsuccessful. Crooked, oblique, expensive and without any prospects.

Having gathered in one place such companies as Sber,"Yandex", VK, "Kaspersky Lab", we will not be able to automatically get a champion who knows how to create operating systems. Moreover, it is not entirely clear why officials suddenly give preference to some commercial companies that have not shown any success in this field, and at the same time abandon the already working system that exists here and now. Where is the logic?

Anton Gorelkin is very well versed in the aspirations of officials, see another message on this topic.

The entire message can be parsed into quotes, andit is important. Let's start dissecting the myth that they are trying to create in the public field. So, “The development of Aurora at the expense of taxpayers is canceled: the Ministry of Digital Transformation has deleted this item of expenditure from the digital transformation program for the next two years. In total, until 2030, Rostelecom expected to receive about 480 billion for the development of Aurora, and personally I was against this idea - the companies themselves, and not the Russian budget, should finance such projects.

"Bad" Rostelecom planned to receive 480billion rubles from the budget for the development of Aurora. I am personally against such expenses for the creation of the Aurora platform, especially since until now it has been developed without the participation and financing of the state, the costs were borne by the same Rostelecom. The amount was taken from stuffing in the Kommersant newspaper, we have already analyzed this figure. This is the cost of devices that can work on the Aurora platform, but not the cost of developing it. Costs vary greatly.

Let's have the following quote:“The new vector is already known: the best personnel of the four leaders of Russian IT - VK, Yandex, Sberbank and Rostelecom will be thrown into the creation of a national mobile OS. The conglomerate of developers plans to repeat the success of Huawei, which found itself under US sanctions and was forced to create its own operating system that is fully compatible with Android, but with its own basic services, including an application store. VK already has such a store, Yandex has a map service and interface developments, and Sber owns the most popular fintech service in the country. It remains to combine all this and release it to the market - the task is quite achievable in a relatively short time.

The view of the layman and nothing more.Let's add applications from different companies into one shell, and we will have our own Android. Look, Huawei has done it in a few years, so we can too. But the creation of HMS took about 8 years, the company suspected that sooner or later it would face sanctions, and created an alternative. After the imposition of sanctions, the development received the highest priority, and it still took them another two years. The total development cost exceeded $25 billion. Several thousand programmers were involved in the work. But the most important thing is different - Huawei had these people, they worked on the system for many years and knew everything that was under the hood of Android. The interaction between Huawei and Google before the imposition of sanctions was the maximum, which accelerated the development. There are no such people in Russian companies, it is impossible to find them anywhere. Hence the simple conclusion - no budget, no people, no prospects. We will not be able to create something digestible on the open version of Android in the foreseeable future. Under the condition of huge investments, it is possible to build something in 5-6 years, but such a system will be worse than the current version of Aurora, that is, what already exists and which took de facto a decade to develop. And again the question is: where is the logic in these decisions?

And here is another quote that shows the levelawareness of the problem: “Without a doubt, this will become one of the most important IT projects on a national scale. Now the vast majority of Russian citizens are forced to use foreign mobile operating systems - with all the risks that follow from this (including the possibility of a mass shutdown of smartphones, which alarmists like to talk about). I expect that the development process of the future operating system will be as open as possible - otherwise it will be difficult for it to claim the status of "people's". Therefore, the first step may be the choice of a suitable name. Throw options in a personal?

And rightly so, the first stage is not understanding the complexitydevelopment, not an attempt to find out whether this is possible in principle. Oh no. It is important for us to come up with a name for this system, so that later we can burn money for a long time and stubbornly, demand state support, since the companies themselves cannot cope with this.

Want the funniest part of this story?You'll love the plot twist. Officials of the Ministry of Digital Transformation crossed out the support of Aurora, namely the adaptation of software for this system. But in the potential system of the future, which many people so much want to create today, this issue will arise in exactly the same way, state investments will be required in order to transfer IT systems to work with this platform. That is, in a few years exactly the same question will arise, and there, apparently, they will try to make it expedient to support another system. What for?

For me, all this fuss around non-existentsystem looks like a deliberate undermining of the country's defense capability, the desire to deprive Russia of its own operating system, which is completely independent of American developments, moreover, it turns every user invisible to the United States. The use of Aurora does not give any country the ability to track the user of this system.

Who are the officials who do not want developmentsuch a system, slow it down as much as possible and remove state support? Whom do they serve and why? I don't have an answer to this question. But what I see clearly points to simple facts - these people want to deprive Russia of the advantage in the future. There are a few countries in the world that have their own operating systems for mobile devices. This is, of course, America, today China has also entered this club (thanks to Huawei), and, oddly enough, Russia is also present in it. There are no other players in this club, they simply do not exist. And knowing this, look at what remarkable efforts are being made to destroy the Aurora. Moreover, this is done under the pretext of a desire to save public money. The national security of the country is at stake, we already have a system that works, and it needs to be developed. It has already proved that it can be used in practice, it needs to equip all officials and security forces, this should have been done yesterday. But instead, we see how from time to time all initiatives are trying to torpedo. And at the same time, a campaign is underway in the press to denigrate the same Aurora, when the same Rostelecom is credited with the desire to receive state money, some incredible budget. I don't know what to say here. Absolutely, all participants in this coven and the destruction of the Aurora should be asked questions. They are either unsuitable for the profession, or deliberately work against Russia. It is sad that all this is being done before our eyes, as if it should be so. I can say one thing - it shouldn't be like this, and anyone who got smeared in this story simply cannot hold any positions in the public service in the future.

We'll be sure to keep an eye on developments.plus, apparently, it will be necessary to dive into the history of Aurora and tell what this system can and cannot do. How does it work and so on. The lack of public discussion of the system creates a vacuum that is filled with fiction.

Towards the northern Aurora - about the Russian platform for half a trillion rubles

What are the problems facing the Russian platform Aurora, why is it more than a replacement for Android, who will pay for it, and where does half a trillion budget money come from.