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:

KDE

https://www.openpetition.de/petition/online/recognition-of-work-on-open-source-as-volunteering-in-germany#petition-main

This would bring fiscal and funding advantages for FLOSS organizations and the volunteers themselves.

If you are a German citizen, please sign the petition and let's get our volunteers the recognition they deserve!

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Photo credit: Redazione Cultura. distributed under CC By SA license

KDE

Do you have something similar in your country? Why not help your national FLOSS projects get the status and support they often desperately need? Start your own petition!

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

Pixel Dunn

@kde nope i don't. in my country they care mostly about using american tech (gafam), and where funding OSS (not saying about FLOSS)…

Damian Fajfer

@kde @tdforg @gnome @Blender @fedora @krita @kdenlive @videolan @fsfe I knew this for a while but I'm always shocked to hear that volunteering gives you any kind of benefits outside of Poland

Sune Stolborg Vuorela

@kde We have a petition https://www.borgerforslag.dk/se-og-stoet-forslag/?Id=FT-22237 running in Denmark on the "official" petition website. If it reaches 50k signatures, the parliament is required to discuss it.

Flux

@kde @tdforg @gnome @Blender @fedora @krita @kdenlive @videolan @fsfe
I actually don’t think I know of any really serious Australian FOSS groups or organisations I can push for our government to take more seriously (and reduce our dependence on foreign companies as a bonus).

64kb

@kde @tdforg@fosstodon.org @gnome @Blender @fedora@fosstodon.org @krita @kdenlive @videolan @fsfe I do, but I think for the UK it works better when there is another countries example to follow. This also has me wondering what level of recognition the UK has for youth work or ambulance service volunteering.

scops

@kde sadly the petition doesn't use the official government petition portal https://epetitionen.bundestag.de. So the officials doesn't "need" to act even if the quorum is reached. Nevertheless I hope the petition will be a huge success.

Booteille

@kde cc @aprilorg

Ivan G.

@kde I would say that this should be extended to the whole EU, and probably this should be promoted at european level.

Beltor

@kde it’s a good idea, but I don‘t really feel like sharing so much personal data including my address with the page, so unfortunately cannot sign

Helge Wurst

@kde Ways Germany can and will turn this against people:

If this is passed without further additions, contributing more than 15 hours / week as an unemployed German citizen can be interpreted as "not being fully available to the job market" and penalized.

If you receive more than 250€/mo via patreon or something as donations for your open source work, this will be penalized by counting as income.

You also have to know how much (highly variable) work you'll be doing.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verordnung_%C3%BCber_die_ehrenamtliche_Bet%C3%A4tigung_von_Arbeitslosen

Helge Wurst

@kde The state should recognize the highly flexible and scalable mode of working on an open source project and create and exemption, removing the 15 hours/week barrier and requirement to announce such work beforehand.

Sent with my Siemens Faxgerät.

Lars

@kde Signed. It's completely arbitrary and way behind the times to somehow consider free and open source volunteer work a second-class citizen.

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!