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 and developed in a public repository. 
Article 58a of the law states that administrative authorities must include the following requirements in tenders for the supply of software:
“Where the subject of the contract includes the development of computer programs, the computer programs must meet the criteria for Open Source software. All intellectual property rights and related rights in the relevant computer programs, their source code, interface designs, and databases that are the subject of the mandate must be fully available, without restrictions on use, modification and distribution. The development must be made in a repository maintained by the organization, in accordance with Article 7c, paragraph 18.”
Bozhidar Bozhanov, an advisor to Bulgaria's deputy prime minister, posted 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 taxpayer money and they should be able to benefit from it too.”
Open Source is a smart approach and one that many countries should follow, for more reasons than making the software available to their citizens.
For starters, the open source software movement certainly allows for increased security. Software experts can search for bugs and vulnerabilities in open source software and report them to governments – or even submit their own patches directly.
Open Source software can also be modified for the various needs of the government, depending on its use by different departments, without this entailing huge costs, as is usually the case with our well-known Microsoft.
Furthermore, governments that choose open source tools are not locked into a single software vendor (see Microsoft again).
Because the software will be available to the general public, they will be able to change vendors at any time for better service or lower costs for maintenance and support.
France, Norway, Brazil, and the US are using open source tools to varying degrees. We hope that other countries will learn from Bulgaria's move in the coming years.
