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Petition for Recognition of Work on Open-Source as Volunteering in Germany

openpetition.de

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Re: Petition for Recognition of Work on Open-Source as Volunteering in Germany

#41

Post by em-bee »

palata wrote: post #38
em-bee wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> FOSS is gemeinnützig, even if the producers are paid. That's exactly what I question. Let's say I develop an open source firmware specific to hardware I produce. It's not compatible with anything else, it's my proprietary hardware. The hardware is a tamagotchi (you wouldn't consider a tamagotchi "gemeinnützig", would you?). I use tivoisation, such that nobody can flash a different firmware than the one I write. Sti…

the problem here is where to draw the line. the thing is though, a perfect line can't be drawn. i can still read your code, and learn something from it. so there is some benefit.

the question is how do we measure benefit?

you could also imagine a project that could be of huge benefit, but nobody knows about it because just publishing it on my website or even on github is not enough.

so maybe benefit is the number of people downloading and using the code. few people would use your firmware, so the benefit would be small.

we are already facing this question with small libraries projects that many other projects depend on. which of these libraries deserve or need our support. if you can answer that question you can also decide if a project is of public benefit.

when it comes to officially recognizing projects, the cost of enforcement is also an issue. it may be unfair that a project like this firmware gets recognized as being of public benefit, but it is also unfair to not recognize other projects that do need the recognition don't get it.

it is not reasonable to reject an idea just because you can construct examples that are not deserving and would exploit a loophole. just like we don't cancel social security benefits just because there are a few bad sheep that are unfairly taking advantage of it.

i find it really frustrating that every good idea is shot down just because some people could benefit unfairly.

Re: Petition for Recognition of Work on Open-Source as Volunteering in Germany

#42

Post by nephihaha »

As others have said, this needs to be addressed to the federal government and be in German.

It also needs to specify which kind of open source work is being done and for what ends.

The other problem is that if everyone works for free then most of us can't pay our bills.

Re: Petition for Recognition of Work on Open-Source as Volunteering in Germany

#43

Post by palata »

em-bee wrote: post #41
palata wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FOSS is gemeinnützig, even if the producers are paid. That's exactly what I question. Let's say I develop an open source firmware specific to hardware I produce. It's not compatible with anything else, it's my proprietary hardware. The hardware is a tamagotchi (you wouldn't consider a tamagotchi "gemeinnützig", would you?). I use tivoisation, such that nobody can flash a different firmware than the one I write. Sti…

the problem here is where to draw the line. the thing is though, a perfect line can't be drawn. i can still read your code, and learn something from it. so there is some benefit. the question is how do we measure benefit? you could also imagine a project that could be of huge benefit, but nobody knows about it because just publishing it on my website or even on github is not enough. so maybe benefit is the number of…

That's exactly my point! It's not as simple as "it is open source, therefore it is gemeinnützig". It depends on the project.

Therefore it doesn't make sense to recognise "open source" as "volunteering". What makes sense is to consider "volunteering projects" as "volunteering projects", and the way one decides that is by looking at the project. Open source or not.

But I assume that's already how it works: to qualify as "volunteering", someone in charge has to look at your activity and confirm that it does, indeed, qualify.

Re: Petition for Recognition of Work on Open-Source as Volunteering in Germany

#44

Post by em-bee »

palata wrote: post #43
em-bee wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the problem here is where to draw the line. the thing is though, a perfect line can't be drawn. i can still read your code, and learn something from it. so there is some benefit. the question is how do we measure benefit? you could also imagine a project that could be of huge benefit, but nobody knows about it because just publishing it on my website or even on github is not enough. so maybe benefit is the number of…

That's exactly my point! It's not as simple as "it is open source, therefore it is gemeinnützig". It depends on the project. Therefore it doesn't make sense to recognise "open source" as "volunteering". What makes sense is to consider "volunteering projects" as "volunteering projects", and the way one decides that is by looking at the project. Open source or not. But I assume that's already how it works: to qualify a…

but making it not simple raises the cost and thus reduces the value.

evaluation of projects is probably more expensive than the tax income lost from projects that should not be considered of public benefit.

Re: Petition for Recognition of Work on Open-Source as Volunteering in Germany

#45

Post by ffsm8 »

presentation wrote: post #26
dhruv3006 wrote: post #11

this is such a great initiative but I fear this may get exploited without proper structure.

Yeah, I don't really want to subsidize people to work on open-source shitcoins for example. The devil is in the details here.

Subsidize?

What? How are you subsidizing anything when it's just recognized as volunteering?

You can at most put that on your Einkommensteuererklärung for a deduction on taxes...

Calling that's subsidizing, idk man, feels massively overblown?

And the Steueramt would have to agree with your statement, which I doubt it would for 99.9% of software.

The exploit-ability of this seems severely overstated here, but I'm not a lawyer so maybe y'all know something I dont

Re: Petition for Recognition of Work on Open-Source as Volunteering in Germany

#46

Post by [deleted] »

palata wrote: post #38
em-bee wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> FOSS is gemeinnützig, even if the producers are paid. That's exactly what I question. Let's say I develop an open source firmware specific to hardware I produce. It's not compatible with anything else, it's my proprietary hardware. The hardware is a tamagotchi (you wouldn't consider a tamagotchi "gemeinnützig", would you?). I use tivoisation, such that nobody can flash a different firmware than the one I write. Sti…

[deleted]

Re: Petition for Recognition of Work on Open-Source as Volunteering in Germany

#47

Post by account42 »

rendx wrote: post #39

As a German working with charities, this petition doesn't make any sense/is not specific enough to know what they actually want. There is no such thing as getting an activity recognized as volunteering. You either volunteer for a registered charity, or you don't. Nobody cares what you do for a charity, whether you write code for it or clean the toilets doesn't matter for recognition. The petition only makes legal sen…

> but the existing set already allows for FOSS projects as part of e.g. the "national education" category (public code is educative)

It may be educative but that is hardly the most significant way in which open source code is beneficial to society.

Re: Petition for Recognition of Work on Open-Source as Volunteering in Germany

#48

Post by account42 »

ffsm8 wrote: post #45
presentation wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don't really want to subsidize people to work on open-source shitcoins for example. The devil is in the details here.

Subsidize? What? How are you subsidizing anything when it's just recognized as volunteering? You can at most put that on your Einkommensteuererklärung for a deduction on taxes... Calling that's subsidizing, idk man, feels massively overblown? And the Steueramt would have to agree with your statement, which I doubt it would for 99.9% of software. The exploit-ability of this seems severely overstated here, but I'm not…

Tax breaks are very much subsidies.

Re: Petition for Recognition of Work on Open-Source as Volunteering in Germany

#49

Post by account42 »

em-bee wrote: post #36
thaumasiotes wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

the punishment argument makes no sense. it is already a problem if someone volunteers in any capacity and then commits a crime. sometimes community service is not the right punishment.

Community service is not supposed to be a punishment but rather an opportunity to offset wrongs done by doing more good than the average person. If someone was already doing good deeds before then that is not an issue. If anything, courts already consider past good deeds when determining sentencing.

It's obviously not something that is an appropriate remedy for all crimes.

Re: Petition for Recognition of Work on Open-Source as Volunteering in Germany

#50

Post by zamadatix »

throw20251220 wrote: post #29
stonogo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like this? https://www.openpetition.de/petition/online/anerkennung-von-...

Almost, still the wrong website.

I think they just meant to point out the petition was available in several languages and tsak was just using one such English versioned link, not to imply that using the main German link also solves mschild's notes.

I.e. it's one thing for a petition to not be on an official government platform/process but it's a completely different type of claim to say it's not even in the country's language when it, of course, is.

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