This petition wants contributing to Free Software to be legally and officially recognized as volunteering in Germany on the same level as youth work or ambulance service:

Luci ☯⚛

The primary thing I do in my time is working on free open source software (FOSS) and volunteering my time and labour to support its users and communities. My work supports not just global but also domestic digital infrastructure. The internet as it is as well as software as a whole could not exist without the hard work that people like us pour into the foundation of all software that is FOSS. Meanwhile, the support we receive for such work is usually very low, negligible or even nonexistent, be it legally or financially. This needs to change. On a global level, but first on a domestic and legal level, by opening pathways for support as described in this petition. Not doing so would not only constitute a missed opportunity to support an altruistic labor of love dedicated to everyone who ever used, uses or will use an app, program, smart device or computer, but it would endanger digital infrastructure in Germany and would contribute to the slowness of making us more independent from US digital infrastructure.

halcy :icosahedron:

@kde great initiative imo, this would be potentially huge

Café-Junkie

@kde
Gute Idee! Aber:
Wäre das als echte Bundestags-Petition (https://epetitionen.bundestag.de/) nicht wesentlich sinnvoller gewesen?

DoctorG ♀️🏳️‍🌈

@svuorela @kde
German petition not on epetitionen.bundestag.de.
You force me to register on a different website?
No thanks!

Bernd

@kde Isn't this now at least the second petition for this on a third-party platform that collects your data for an uncertain outcome? Why not use the official Bundestag e-Petition system? That way: No intermediary is involved that collects your data and, when making it an official Bundestag petition, parliament has to discuss it when it has collected a certain number of signatures.

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

Also, why is it in English? While there are some German citizens that don't speak German, there may be a lot more that don't speak English.

xs4me2

@kde

Great initiative!

StarWolf3000

@hopfgeist@digitalcourage.social @kde@floss.social Ich stimme dir da vollumfänglich zu, solch eine Petition gehört eigentlich auf den Internetauftritt des Bundestages.
Es gibt aber zumindest eine deutsche Version der Petition hier.

Kevin Karhan :verified:

@kde what's sad is that it's not on the official federal parlament petitions portal, so it'll be consequence-free ignored eveb if it would smash the 30k quota instantly.

dav1d

@kde without the efforts of developers Linux wouldn't be where is it now, especially with gaming so yea thanks to all devs

️

David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)

@kde

It's hard for me to see what that should look like. If I work on a personal project with no other users, is that volunteer work? How is that different from working in my own front garden (is that volunteering in Germany)?

If my employer releases my work as F/OSS, can they count my time as volunteering for any tax purposes? What about if it's a F/OSS component that is useful only in conjunction with some non-Free thing that they sell?

dickiegranthum

@kde ja!

Monospace Mentor

@david_chisnall It's similar to charity work. There are definitions what counts as such, entry criteria and assessments. The goal, as I understand it, is to make FLOSS work first of all eligible to be classified as Volunteer Work.
@kde

David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)

@monospace @kde

It's similar to charity work

So qualifying F/OSS projects will require a load of compliance work that doesn't make sense unless your turnover in donations is large?

I'm not familiar with what counts as volunteer work in general for tax / legal purposes in Germany.

Monospace Mentor

@david_chisnall I don't know the intricacies either, but I'm sure there will be some amount of red tape. No free lunch, but at least it would be an option.
@kde

Mx Amber Alex (she/it)

@kde and where's the petition that actually has a chance of achieving anything?

Where's the parliamentary e-petition?

Because petitions on whatever platforms are pointless. Petitions filed with the Bundestag petition committee actually force the parliament to discuss them if they pass the threshold.

n8chz 🩎

@kde@floss.socia

I know little of legal matters. One thing about the American situation for FLOSS, that I learned from @pluralistic but I forgot where I read it, is that open source projects have to be "educational" projects in order to qualify for status as non-profit organizations. I've long had the impression that US tax law is designed to aggressively prevent competition between the non-profit sector and the for-profit sector, and absolutely rule out competition between the public sector and the private sector.

@tdforg @gnome @Blender @fedora @Krita @kdenlive @videolan @fsfe

BaseFortify

@kde A very good endeavour, I hope this succeeds.

Sune Stolborg Vuorela

@DoctorG_1 hi. I sent the link to the Danish petition on the official Danish site?

António Domingues

@kde can legal residents sign it as well, or only citizens?

wojtek

@hacknorris @kde just because the government is shitty doesn't mean there aren't grassroots initiatives to push FOSS usage…