The Bulgarian Parliament managed to pass three amendments to the e-Government law, which require all software written for the government to be (Open Source) code and developed in a public repository. 
The Article 58a of the law states that the administrative authorities should include the following requirements in tender procedures for the supply of software:
"When the subject of the contract includes the development of electronic programs computers, computer programs should meet the criteria for open source software. All copyright and related rights of the relevant computer programs, their source code, interface design, and databases that are the subject of the order should be fully available, without restrictions on use, modification and delivery. The deployment should be in a repository maintained by the organization in accordance with Article 7c, paragraph 18.”
Bozhidar Bozhanov, an adviser to Bulgaria's Deputy Prime Minister, has published on the government blog that this means:
“Whatever custom software the government procures will be visible and accessible to everyone. It is something that is acquired with money paid by the taxpayers and they should also be able to benefit from it.”
Open Source is a smart approach and many countries will have to follow, for more reasons than putting software to their citizens.
For starters this is a great way to get word out that your software is running high. Software experts can look for bugs and vulnerabilities in open source software and report them to governments - or even submit their own patches right away.
Open Source software can also be modified for different government needs, depending on its use by different departments, without incurring huge costs, as is usually the case with our well-known Microsoft.
In addition, governments choosing open source tools do not remain dependent on a single software vendor (see Microsoft Again).
Because the software will be available to the general public, they will be able to switch suppliers at any time for the best service or the lowest cost for maintenance and support.
France, Norway, Brazil and the USA use open source tools to varying degrees. We hope that other countries will learn about Bulgaria's move in the coming years.
