• mschild 4 hours ago
    I agree with the goal but unless you create the petition using the official Bundestag website, this is about as useful as a thumbs up on Facebook.

    If you make a petition with the official website and it passes they have to deal with it, even if its a rejection.

    https://epetitionen.bundestag.de/epet/peteinreichen.html

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  • palata 2 hours ago
    I don't think that equating all open source work with volunteering makes sense.

    Volunteering is defined by its charitable purpose for a public good, not by the specific skill used.

    Let me try an analogy:

    A chef who cooks a free meal for a homeless shelter is volunteering. That same chef publishing a recipe online or making a cooking tutorial is sharing knowledge, not volunteering. The act of 'cooking' or 'publishing' is neutral. It becomes volunteering only when the primary, direct, and organised purpose is to serve a charitable cause without expectation of personal gain.

    Disclaimer: I have been consistently doing a lot of open source in the last 10 years. I would consider none of that as volunteering.

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    • atoav 2 hours ago
      But the German word for it is "gemeinnützig" which loosely translates to "useful for the commons".

      So also things like helping kids with their homework or giving people courses in your hackerspace, repaircafes, reading with others can fall into that.

      So while maybe not all software that is open source also is automatically useful for the commons as it is now the definition is way too narrow. If you write software that helps one of the existing recognized causes it is openns source. If you write an open source photoshop or spend days working on software that keeps the world running you don't. But we need the latter people and supporting the former people makes the world a better place.

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      • palata 34 minutes ago
        > So also things like helping kids with their homework or giving people courses in your hackerspace, repaircafes, reading with others can fall into that.

        I'm guessing it doesn't count if you are being helped to help kids or give courses, does it? So not only it depends on what it is, it also depends on how it is done.

        Open source in itself is not charitable, and many people get paid to contribute to open source projects.

        My point is that I agree that some open source projects can count as volunteering, just like some masonry work. But I wouldn't say that "open source" should count as volunteering, just like for masonry.

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        • em-bee 8 minutes ago
          those who pay others to develop open source (or free software) would be donating to charity. so it is still volunteering, just indirectly.

          also the term "gemeinnützig" is about the end result, not how it is produced. FOSS is gemeinnützig, even if the producers are paid.

  • zamadatix 3 hours ago
    Previous discussion (141 comments) which used the German version of the URL a few months back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46078770
  • ggm 3 hours ago
    I very much hope this doesn't descend into licence wars but I would think all of the BSD, MIT, ISC, hold-harmless, RAND and GNU licences qualified. If that's true and it was understood the public/commons got an outcome, I'd be in favour.

    If the code is under restrictive clauses, or gets tokenistic input and the quotient of time and money is spent doing something else, then I think this is a licence to cheapen out contracting rates for-profit.

    How does an auditor know?

  • dhruv3006 3 hours ago
    this is such a great initiative but I fear this may get exploited without proper structure.
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    • presentation 2 hours ago
      Yeah, I don't really want to subsidize people to work on open-source shitcoins for example. The devil is in the details here.
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      • palata 2 hours ago
        I think that the problem is that "open source" in itself is not volunteering.

        Just like "masonry" is not volunteering, even though a mason could volunteer by building an orphanage pro bono. But when they build their own house, it's not volunteering.

        I don't even think that being paid for building an orphanage counts as volunteering... does it?

  • thaumasiotes 3 hours ago
    What does it mean for volunteering to be "recognized" in Germany?
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    • guessmyname 3 hours ago
      Certain reimbursements/allowances for volunteering are treated favorably for tax purposes if conditions are met, e.g. ehrenamtspauschale (volunteer allowance).

      Also, as Gemeinnützig, for tax and for issuing donation receipts.

      It could also function as community service hours ordered by a court (sozialstunden).

      Stuff like that.

    • zeeZ 3 hours ago
      In addition to tax stuff there's a card you can get in most states, issued by cities/districts based on certain criteria, like doing a certain amount of hours per week of volunteer work, that will give you a discount or free entry to museums, pools, movie theaters, events.. There's listings online of all the institutions and businesses that give a discount.
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      • thaumasiotes 2 hours ago
        For this, and for the criminal justice use case, it seems to me that it isn't possible for "work on open source" to receive this kind of formal recognition. Anyone is free to self-certify that they're working on an open-source project headed by, and exclusively contributed to by, themselves.

        You'd need to formally recognize open-source projects that the German state approves of, on a case-by-case basis.

        And even then you have questions like "If Hans Reiser is sentenced to community service for killing his wife, can he satisfy that by working on reiserfs? How is that different from sentencing him to no punishment?"

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    • Mountain_Skies 2 hours ago
      Though the petition is about Germany, in the US some entitlement programs come with work requirements that can be satisfied by volunteer work. Given the tech job market and how the US government's labor policies are detrimental to native workers, allowing them to keep their skills sharp through open source work while also satisfying the work requirements of various social programs, it seems like a decent trade-off. This presumes the government and the donors to the politicians that run it don't really want native workers to be unskilled. Their actions indicate the opposite, so that throws a bit of a wrench into things.
    • kkarpkkarp 3 hours ago
      Tax exempts (I'm not a German, but I was curious about the same and this is what ChatGPT told me :) )
  • phendrenad2 3 hours ago
    > Compensations could be paid tax-exempt

    I think this is the real killer feature here. Software companies could save money by simply open-sourcing parts of their software.

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    • andyferris 3 hours ago
      Interesting.

      Similarly R&D tax incentives could be made to only apply if the R&D is publically available (for study, and any use)

  • Uptrenda 3 hours ago
    What work would count as valid open source work though? I assume projects that people use are obvious. But what about ones where you're just throwing up your own projects where they start out with no users or impact? Even though its open source, does it need strategic importance from the get-go? Who decides?
  • on_the_train 3 hours ago
    It's ok to have a hobby. Not everything needs to be minmaxed to extract the maximum amount of money from the system.
  • mytailorisrich 2 hours ago
    I don't know if there is the concept of charity organisation in Germany but I feel this is the sort of thing that ought to be limited to registered charities not to be abused/get out of hand.
  • system2 2 hours ago
    Many of my friends wouldn't qualify for this. They are either doing it as a hobby or to show the projects as their resume helpers.
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    • thaumasiotes 34 minutes ago
      Why would that disqualify them? Those are also the reasons that people volunteer in soup kitchens.
  • vasco 3 hours ago
    You can already start a non profit in almost every country. If you're serious and at it for a while and have some structure.

    On an individual basis I don't think giving tax breaks to anyone with a chatGPT tab open makes sense.

  • jaco6 3 hours ago
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  • fleroviumna 3 hours ago
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