Лучше сегодня иметь то, что работает хоть как-то, чем вообще ничего не иметь. Делайте сейчас – завтра поезд уйдет! Именно реакция пользователей подскажет вам, куда идти.

Случай с пользователем ЖЖ, которого обвинили в "возбуждении ненависти" - один из многих эпизодов применения норм законодательства совсем не для тех целей, для которых они создавались.

Oleg Bunin, the founder of Russian Internet Technologies conference (RIT'2007) announced the forthcoming start of professional developers union in Russia. The institution would be responsible for contacts with universities (and working out educational recommendations), promotion of professional standards, maintaining rights of union members in open-source projects and fighting excessive Internet regulation. Also the union would educate web-hosters "so that they don't get overheat at summer and could faster react on DDos-attacks", smiles Oleg Bunin. Although union's founders are not ready to registrate it as formal institution, they are all eager to act as a consolidated professional community.

Nizhniy Novgorod region authorities negotiate with Intel, Microsoft, HP and IBM about opening their offices in Ankoudinovka technopark. The construction of Ankoudinovka by 2010 is estimated for about $15 bln rubles, where state and regional budgets together provide only 3.1 bln rubles. The technopark occupies 6.2 square kilometres territory in Nizhniy Novgorod suburbs where a business center, technological objects and apartments for staff would be situated. Also it is planned to open a business incubator - a co-project of Ankoudinovka and Nizhniy Novgorod State University. Another Russian 'Silicon Valley' will appear next to Moscow by 2012.

OpenView Venture Partners and ABRT Venture Fund launched their new investment program "Partnership for Russia". The goal of the joint effort is to identify and invest in the best software & information technology companies in Russia and East-Central Europe. This wasn't their first common initiative here - OpenView and ABRT joint investment in Russian software business totals over $30m. Joint successes include, among others, Aelita Software (sold to Quest Software in 2004 for $115 million), Acronis, and Quintura.

"If you are an entrepreneur with a young, fast growing software company in Russia, we would love to talk to you," commented Andrei Baronov of ABRT. "If you want to learn more about how Ratmir [Timashev, ABRT partner] and I have grown Aelita Software with the help of the OpenView team to an exit of $115 million, give us a call or send us an email!"

Earlier this month another venturer launched its program in Russia - Cisco announced its plans to expand on Russian technology market. To launch the initiative, the company has acquired a share in a leading Russian e-commerce site, Ozon.

Copyright section was probably the toughest one at Russian Internet Forum (April 5-7). The main discussion flamed around Civil Code part IV amendments that come into force next year's start. The law actually bans any web publication that was not formalized by a written contract between its author and a publisher. Hardly a few can now boast having such papers so the ocean of suits might be on the way to court. These new amendments contain no record of Creative Commons, GPL or any global open source standards. To make it even worse, Russian law hasn't got any appropriate 'website' definition. Section participants dealing with law explained that in terms of Civil Code website could be seen as 'a computer program' or even 'a database'. Even hyper-links can be treated as 'transport' so the publication of a link to some There were no practical cases though.

The new copyright law changed the perspective for Linux developers as well. It came to the participants of round-table discussion on freeware that international copyright standards like Creative Commons and GPL are outlawed in Russia. However Petr Frolov from LinuxCenter.ru distributing CDs with Linux during said every copy contains 'all required labels of authors and publishers'. Anton Nosik from Sup Fabric resumed how senseless was the whole idea to discuss the right in the Web applied to the country where you may buy a pirate DVD next door to Federal Security Service building. Still the participants of the discussion stayed optimistic and welcomed free browser applications which would ceize the need to buy or download anything.