Summary: Despite some promises and reassurances that Bulgaria will consider Free/libre software, the Bulgarian government hands out a lot more of taxpayers' money to the Mafia

ABOUT six years ago in Bulgaria promises were made regarding Free software. Knowing Microsoft's political influence in Europe, we didn't have nor did we keep) high hopes. We already know that Microsoft is blackmailing British politicians. We found out about it earlier this year. Well, maybe Microsoft bribed them too. Microsoft is like the Mafia and the criminal activities continue to this date; nobody in Microsoft is being sent to jail over it because Microsoft is based on the US, where Microsoft has firm control over the government (just like in the Indian government and Asia in general, but not quite to the same degree, including all the entryism, courtesy of Microsoft lobbyists and 'former' employees).

Anyway, earlier this month we learned that Bulgaria, where officials are generally not so hard (or expensive) to corrupt, signed another deal with Microsoft. Here are some details:

Bulgarian government will pay EUR 30,000,000.00 yes 30 Millons of EURO to Microsoft for licensee fees for using Windows OS and Office packages for the Bulgarian administration in the next three years.

They pay this amount every three years i.e. about EUR 10M per year are spent on something which have completely free and open source alternative which every one could use free of charge.

Seems not very logical?

Not quite, you forget that this is the Bulgarian government. The government administration officers here have one and only target when they get in power – to cash their efforts.

What they could cash if there is no money to spend on free Linux OS?

[...]

What if these 100 Millions were invested in the Bulgarian education instead to fill the pockets of corrupted administration and Microsoft? We never know as this would never happen here.

As the blogger points out, this is a big deal as this is the equivalent of allowing the "UK government to spend 1830 millions of EURO for MS licensees". Yes, that's nearly two billion euros! Microsoft has just robbed Bulgaria and few care to notice and fight back. Maybe we need some whistleblowers here... ⬆

“You’re going out with a girl, what you really want to do is have a deep, close and intimate relationship, at least for one night. And, you know, you just can’t let her feel like that, because if you do, it ain’t going to happen, right. So you have to talk long term and white picket fence and all these other wonderful things, or else you’re never going to get what you’re really looking for.”

--James Plamondon, Lead Microsoft Evangelist