[HN Gopher] Petition to formally recognize open source work as c...
___________________________________________________________________
Petition to formally recognize open source work as civic service in
Germany
Author : PhilippGille
Score : 483 points
Date : 2025-11-28 14:08 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.openpetition.de)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.openpetition.de)
| leothetechguy wrote:
| I mean sure why not?
|
| As long as contributions happen in good faith and not just for
| the sake of contributing, but I'm assuming there's already a
| system in place to ensure that for other civic services.
| poszlem wrote:
| As someone who has worked for the government, I think you at
| least mistaken or very naive if you think that.
| checker659 wrote:
| Without open source there would be no code writing LLMs. It is
| charity of the highest order (to say the least).
| netdevphoenix wrote:
| Great idea, I think there should be some conditions.
|
| a) you should not be the owner (to avoid pet projects that are
| not actually useful) of the project or at least not the sole
| owner
|
| b) ideally it should be some high impact projects that have
| little to no corpo sponsors as opposed to something like React
|
| c) if your contribution is not merged in, it should not count as
| "work done"
| huqedato wrote:
| Agree but... these would be hard and expensive to assess
| objectively, in particular point b.
| asah wrote:
| ??? seems straightforward... among other things, require the
| applicant to do the work / provide evidence...
| londons_explore wrote:
| Some government team could just make a list of allowable
| projects, updating it every year, and starting for example
| with all projects with over 100 GitHub stars or some similar
| metric.
| threeducks wrote:
| > all projects with over 100 GitHub stars or some similar
| metric.
|
| I think it would be difficult to come up with a good
| metric. For example, it should not be based on some easily
| faked number governed by a foreign company.
| LtWorf wrote:
| > all projects with over 100 GitHub stars
|
| Lol, they have been on sale online since forever, because
| investors apparently can be conned into thinking they have
| some value.
| Aurornis wrote:
| GitHub stars would be gamed immediately. You can already
| buy GitHub stars by the hundreds from spam services.
|
| A better solution would be to require a written proposal
| which gets reviewed by someone who assesses against some
| criteria such as project age and other factors. Don't make
| it too hard, but make it enough to stop the scheming
| individuals who think they're going to start their own
| GitHub repo, set Claude Code loose in it once a week, and
| call it civil service.
| darkmighty wrote:
| Does it need to be objective though? I think a vague list of
| criteria including "The project must benefit a community", or
| "The project must not be made solely for the benefit of their
| employer", and have someone review the proposal should be
| enough.
| denismenace wrote:
| Would Linux count as a project with corpo sponsors?
| whstl wrote:
| Yeah, Linux definitely has corporate sponsors. This is not a
| good rule of thumb.
|
| React is also now owned by the React Foundation, so I also
| don't see why it would be problematic to contribute to it now
| that it doesn't (seem to) belong to Facebook anymore.
| dvtkrlbs wrote:
| I mean the foundation is still mostly governed by corpo
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Isn't that true for the linux foundation?
| asmor wrote:
| To a degree. But the corporate interest is spread across
| enough organisations that it's much harder for the Linux
| kernel to reject a patch solely because it's good for
| business, whereas a lot of corporate open source projects
| - even those with an OSI approved license - will actively
| refuse to merge code that competes with their commercial
| offering or simply isn't submitted by a customer.
| Hashicorp already operated like this long before they
| switched to BSL. Unfortunately having a project owned by
| a foundation isn't a good indicator either, because I
| know of at least one Apache project where the entire
| membership is one company, the CEO is the project chair
| and code is sometimes just dropped into repos in one huge
| commit.
| Aurornis wrote:
| I think the anti-corporate angle is a bit extreme as it
| would rule out a large number of projects that are widely
| used.
|
| If the project is truly open source and widely used by the
| community it shouldn't matter if it is or was associated
| with a corporation. Contributing to it helps the public who
| use that project too.
| LoganDark wrote:
| How do you handle projects where the owner is part of a large
| community? Maintainers of very important or useful projects
| should count, right?
| sReinwald wrote:
| I think point a) is actually backwards and potentially
| counterproductive to the petition's stated goals.
|
| The petition explicitly highlights maintainer burnout and the
| "unausgewogene Verantwortungslast" (unbalanced responsibility
| burden) as core problems. Excluding project owners/maintainers
| from recognition would exclude precisely the people carrying
| the heaviest load - the ones triaging issues at 2am, reviewing
| PRs, making architectural decisions, and bearing the
| psychological weight of knowing critical infrastructure depends
| on their continued engagement.
|
| The XZ Utils incident is instructive here: the attack vector
| was specifically a burned-out solo maintainer who was socially
| engineered because he was overwhelmed and desperate for help.
| If anything, recognition and support structures should
| prioritize these individuals, not exclude them. Your concern
| about "pet projects with no impact" is valid, but the solution
| isn't to exclude owners categorically - it's to define impact
| criteria. A threshold based on adoption metrics, dependency
| chains, or inclusion in public infrastructure would filter out
| portfolio projects without penalizing the people doing the most
| critical work.
|
| Point c) also seems problematic for similar reasons: much of
| maintainer work isn't "merged contributions" - it's code
| review, issue triage, documentation, community management,
| security response. Under your criteria, the person who reviews
| and merges 500 PRs per year while writing none themselves would
| receive no recognition.
|
| The petition is trying to address a structural problem where
| society extracts massive value from unpaid labor while
| providing no support structures. Excluding the most burdened
| participants seems like it would perpetuate rather than solve
| that problem.
| Aurornis wrote:
| I think limiting the recognition to repos that reach some
| level of significance would solve a lot of the problems.
|
| It would anger the smaller projects and fresh projects, but
| it's the only way to avoid having people create hobby
| projects or portfolio-filling slop repos and try to claim it
| as civic service.
|
| This reminds me of a trend a few years ago when I started
| seeing a lot of applications from people who listed
| themselves as founders of a charitable foundation on their
| resume. I felt impressed the first time I saw it but got
| suspicious after the 3rd or 4th. Then I realized that it
| doesn't take much work to incorporate a charitable foundation
| and list your family and friends as board members. The hard
| work was actually raising and disbursing money. When I
| started asking for details about how much the organization
| did I got wishy-washy answers and a lot of changing the
| subject. This is why details matter and it's not as simple as
| giving everyone who claims an achievement the same reward,
| however small the reward may be.
| withinboredom wrote:
| > if your contribution is not merged in, it should not count as
| "work done"
|
| I highly disagree with this. Sometimes someone has to do the
| work to discover that isn't the work that should be done. As an
| example, last week, I got in a fight with the Go scheduler:
| https://github.com/php/frankenphp/pull/2016 -- in the end, we
| were able to find the one-liner that is a happy-medium. I
| didn't open that PR, but I did the work; if that makes sense.
| Aurornis wrote:
| In a program like this you can't optimize for the assumption
| that every participant is acting in good faith and
| contributing good work even if it's not accepted.
|
| If a program incentivizes opening PRs even if they're not
| accepted, the result will be a lot of maintainer spam from
| people opening useless PRs. This isn't a personal
| hypothetical, it's what we observe any time programs try to
| incentivize open source work. See the Hacktoberfest drama of
| years past where the promise of a T-shirt led to spam PRs
| across GitHub https://joel.net/how-one-guy-ruined-
| hacktoberfest2020-drama
| withinboredom wrote:
| At that point, you tackle abuse, which is a separate topic
| altogether.
| Aurornis wrote:
| It's not a separate topic. You have to structure the
| program so that abuse is disincentivized from the start.
|
| In the T-shirt example if you left the program as-is but
| then decided that tackling abuse is a separate topic,
| think about what that would look like: Every maintainer
| would now not only have to read and close the spam PRs,
| they'd have to go file an abuse report for every single
| one of them. Now you've put even more work on the
| maintainers and created an additional burden of reviewing
| reports, all without clarifying the program to discourage
| abuse from the start.
|
| This is why it's necessary to structure a program clearly
| such that abuse-level or low effort inputs can't easily
| claim the rewards.
| baseballdork wrote:
| I mostly agree here, but the other side is now
| maintainers will be aware that not merging a PR could
| financially impact someone. I don't know that that's a
| great system, either.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Any time you introduce an explicit incentive, however small, to
| open source work the unintended consequences can become a
| problem.
|
| The Hacktoberfest incident is a good example: The program
| offered a T-shirt to people who had a PR accepted. The result
| was tens of thousands of useless PRs across open source repos
| and maintainers begging for the program to stop so they could
| stop dealing with useless PRs. https://joel.net/how-one-guy-
| ruined-hacktoberfest2020-drama
|
| In a situation like this you can't assume that the set of
| people and the type of work being submitted will remain the
| same as before the incentive appears.
| retrac wrote:
| All my silly pet projects which are otherwise quite useless,
| were nonetheless very useful as didactic exercises.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Useful for you and your personal career growth, yes.
|
| Important civic service that should be recognized, no.
| retrac wrote:
| I must completely misunderstand the purpose of the German
| system of conscription. I thought the point was to train
| the reserve populace in relevant skills to defence and
| public functioning, not just to extract labour.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > I must completely misunderstand the purpose of the
| German system of conscription
|
| Conscription would be compulsory enlistment for service.
| That is, the government selects you for the work and you
| have no choice but to do it. It's a rarely used practice
| almost exclusively employed for military service.
|
| The topic of this petition is civic service. Civic
| service is volunteer work done for the good of the
| community. Civic service work needs to have a direct
| public benefit, not simply claiming that it makes you
| personally better educated.
| retrac wrote:
| Sorry you're right I was mistaking this with the civil
| service that was offered as an alternative to military
| conscription.
| vachina wrote:
| Terrible deal for the German taxpayer. Excellent deal for Amazon
| et. al.
| lionkor wrote:
| How so?
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Big corporations benefit from OSS that Germany would now
| paying to write... exacerbates a preexisting power imbalance
| with OSS, similar reason some projects have moved to AGPL
| lionkor wrote:
| The government does not give money for this, that is not
| the point and is not how this works at all. This would
| simply make it easier to get compensated for open source
| contributions (tax-free, to a certain small number).
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| reducing taxes is giving money
| lionkor wrote:
| Not at the scale of Aufwandsentschaedigung (well under
| 1000 bucks a month before tax)
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| So they're not losing any tax revenue by doing this?
| lionkor wrote:
| This is absolutely the correct next step. When considering
| starting a pretty sizeable FOSS project in the past (was going to
| be AGPL-3, we had a team and had just left another project to
| start this), we considered registering an e.V. in Germany, for
| many of the same benefits. Ultimately, the team disbanded for
| other reasons, but if this was in place, we would have likely
| been able to start much earlier and the team would not have
| disbanded most likely.
|
| We were concerned about finances and legal protection.
| lionkor wrote:
| To add some details actually; we were concerned about three
| major points:
|
| 1. The project would deal with user's data to some degree
|
| 2. The project was going to "annoy" an existing, much larger,
| project who would have likely tried to take some legal action
| to keep their "place at the top"
|
| 3. The project was going to both a) need to generate funds (and
| pay core developers), and b) be guaranteed to generate funds,
| based on our experience. However, we did not want to register a
| company as _not_ having a company complicate things was one of
| the central goals of the split from the larger project. Try
| paying people a couple hundred bucks (less than minimum wage,
| more like Aufwandsentschaedigung) without having to jump
| through various hoops and without doing it illegally.
| weinzierl wrote:
| An e.V. in Germany mostly makes sense if it is also charitable.
| You will have a hard time justifying that for an arbitrary FOSS
| project.
|
| There are about 100 categories that are predeclared as
| potentially charitable and you have to fit into one of them.
| Most of them are weirdly specific like homing-pigeon breeding
| or model plane flying.
|
| The only two that are broader and remotely realistic candidates
| for a FOSS project are religion and education.
|
| If you don't want to start a cult you are left with education.
| That is as how organizations like Chaos Computer Club do it.
| Education means education for the general public though and it
| is not enough if you offer occasional courses for a niche
| topic. It has to be something that potentially interests
| everyone. The tax office is checking that and it is on you
| proof it to them regularly.
| constantcrying wrote:
| What is the point? What benefits does an Ehrenamt even bring (fyi
| I have one) and why would an activity as broad as open source
| work qualify? Many open source projects are done without any good
| for the public, why should such a developer get such a title?
|
| If you want any of this, why don't you found a Verein and have
| open source activities as the purpose?
|
| All in all I an very much against this. Mostly because I think
| Ehrenamter, as they exist now, are pretty stupid and pointless
| and because I strongly believe the state should not get involved
| with this at all.
| avhception wrote:
| Maybe you are right and an Verein would be a better venue for
| this. What are your concerns with Ehrenamtern?
| em-bee wrote:
| the point is that it would be easier to have such a verein
| recognized as being for public benefit.
| constantcrying wrote:
| Would it? E.g. Codeberg is gemeinnutzige (for the public
| benefit) are there any examples of a Verein being denied
| gemeinnutzigkeit based on the fact that open source
| development is not a recognized Ehrenamt?
| em-bee wrote:
| i suppose it depends on how they fund themselves. for
| example, i have a project that i am funding myself
| entirely with commercial activity. would be nice if i
| could make tax free donations to myself for the time i
| work on the project.
| p-e-w wrote:
| > Many open source projects are done without any good for the
| public
|
| Such as? By definition, open source projects are provided to
| the public, for free. That's obviously a good for the public.
|
| Note that in order for something to be a public service, it
| need not be useful for _every_ member of the public. Most
| people have no interest in curling, but that doesn't mean
| running a non-profit curling club that is open to everyone
| isn't a public good.
| dap wrote:
| Open-source ransomware?
| jodrellblank wrote:
| I'm glad the last FizzBuzz-golfed-in-$esolang I put on the
| internet was "obviously a good for the public", although I
| wouldn't mind seeing your reasoning because it isn't clear to
| me how.
| p-e-w wrote:
| Demonstrating how it's possible to do something is a public
| good. This really isn't complicated unless you're being
| deliberately obtuse.
| layer8 wrote:
| Demonstrating how it's possible to do something useless
| is a public good?
| jodrellblank wrote:
| > " _This really isn't complicated unless you're being
| deliberately obtuse._ "
|
| Some open source software has changed the world, for the
| better. By quantity, most open source repositories are
| forks of another with no changes, new projects abandoned
| before getting anywhere, abandonware that an author has
| moved on from, or that the world has moved on from.
| They're no more than digital litter. If they were real
| world artifacts, they would be disposed of as trash, or
| sold to asset strippers, or nature would rot them away
| eventually. In the digital world we have built a
| hoarder's paradise and that has costs - costs to read
| through them, sort through them, decide if they are worth
| bothering with. Costs of leaving outdated, misleading,
| insecure, unreliable, code hanging around for people (and
| LLMs) to 'learn' from in negative ways.
|
| It's probably good that any developer or hobbyist can
| build their own blog engine. It's not "obviously" good
| that the public benefits from 5,000 partial blog engines,
| let alone 50,000 of them, or in a hundred years 5,000,000
| of them; one doesn't have to be deliberately obtuse to
| question that.
| FinnKuhn wrote:
| Apparantly you can receive up to 840EUR per year tax free for
| it?
| constantcrying wrote:
| No. From the money you receive for your volunteer activities
| you can get that money tax-free up to 840 Euros. I have not
| gotten a single cent for my activities, so I have gotten
| exactly zero benefit from my Ehrenamt in that regard.
| FinnKuhn wrote:
| Open Source contributers often have a way to send them
| money. I assumed that this would then qualify for this tax
| excemption?
| limagnolia wrote:
| For non Germans, can you explain what this would mean? I read a
| machine translation of the article, and basically it seemed to
| be claiming that forming a tax exempt open source foundation in
| Germany would be easier if this were approved? But I may be
| missing some nuance in both the translation and the German
| legal and tax system to fully understand it?
|
| In the USA, open source foundations can be non-profits, usually
| they are formed for scientific, and sometimes maybe educational
| purposes. (The allowed exempt purposes of a 501(c)(3), the most
| common type used for open source foundations, are "charitable,
| religious, educational, scientific, literary, testing for
| public safety, fostering national or international amateur
| sports competition, and preventing cruelty to children or
| animals".) There are other requirements that must be met for
| exemption as well.
|
| I am curious how German and US laws differ in this regard, if
| you happen to know more about it. Thanks!
| constantcrying wrote:
| These are different concepts. What you are describing is an
| organization not operating for profit, which Germany of
| course has too. This is about open source contribution being
| an "Ehrenamt", which is when an individual participates in
| certain volunteer activities without pay. E.g. being a
| volunteer firefighter would be such an "Ehrenamt".
|
| This is about recognition for individuals (which is much if
| what an Ehrenamt even is). Besides some very minor tax
| benefits, only applicable under certain circumstances, where
| you earn some money from your Ehrenamt activities, all this
| is, is an participation award for volunteer work.
| looperhacks wrote:
| > I don't see the point
|
| > Therefore I'm against this
|
| Dude.
| lionkor wrote:
| For example, this would allow an open source project to split
| donations between contributors in a legal way
| constantcrying wrote:
| I don't think that is true at all. Do you have any evidence
| for this? What about not having an Ehrenamt makes it illegal
| to split donations?
|
| If you want to have legal protections and a proper governance
| structure you would found a Verein. Codeberg has a Verein
| with Gemeinnutzigkeit, which seems a superior, already
| established, way to accomplish this.
| Propelloni wrote:
| I do volunteer work as a treasurer in a charity and I disagree
| on Ehrenamter being stupid and pointless, but otherwise I
| agree.
|
| The petitioners seem to be blissfully unaware how civil service
| is recognized in Germany. Or they are all too much aware and
| want to undermine transparency requirements by asking for
| special treatment for open source developers. The charity
| principle requires to assume the former.
| constantcrying wrote:
| I definitely do not believe that the activities being done as
| part of an Ehrenamt are stupid
|
| What I wanted to express is that it is "just" various forms
| of volunteer work, which ranges between some occasional
| organizational work in a Verein to doing hard physical labor
| at 3 in the night. What the petition argues is that open
| source developers "deserve" the title of "Ehrenamt", which
| really is what I disliked about the whole thing. Because
| effectively it is just a designation, nobody does their
| volunteering for that title or any of the benefits it gives
| you.
|
| The demands of the petition would be solved by just founding
| a Verein (which is exactly the structure you want to organize
| volunteer activity), but as you said, if you wanted to
| interpret the petition as negatively as possible, the
| petition wants to avoid having a Verein, which enforces a
| certain degree of openness and transparency about finances.
| blenderob wrote:
| Are these petitions anything like what they've got in UK? IIRC in
| UK petitions that receive some threshold of votes must be debated
| in the parliament. Is this petition like that? Anyone from
| Germany can throw some light on how seriously these petitions are
| taken?
| hwh wrote:
| it is, but the threshold for mandated debate is high. So high
| in fact that this doesn't really happen at all. Usually,
| petitions like this are mostly a PR vehicle. A lot of them is
| also a bit underspecific in what exactly they are requesting of
| what political entity.
| avhception wrote:
| Nice, signed!
| basemi wrote:
| Not against it but how do you track time spent on it?
| clickety_clack wrote:
| Maybe the good old "lines of code" days will make a comeback?
| barbazoo wrote:
| Human written or also AI?
| hagbard_c wrote:
| Lines of code are easily produced using coding models. OK, so
| let's add another criterium, 'lines of code produced by a
| human'. Now some form of arbitrage is needed to discern vibe-
| coded lines from human-coded ones.
| aequitas wrote:
| https://www.folklore.org/Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.html
| layer8 wrote:
| With a clock?
| whstl wrote:
| In Germany, as I understand it, civic service can only be
| performed if you are "hired" by a recognized host organization,
| and host organizations must be non-profit, public, or community-
| benefit organizations.
|
| So most certainly wouldn't be just "committing to Github projects
| from home", it would require a host organization to actually the
| legwork and get itself approved as non-profit but also as a host
| of civic services.
|
| And knowing German bureaucracy, the above is not easy. ;)
| juliangmp wrote:
| I'm no lawyer or expert on these matters, but I know that
| Codeberg e.V. is considered charitable, so the people hired by
| Codeberg should be eligible for this already, I think.
|
| I don't know if KDE e.V. is also considered charitable, but I
| assume they are, and they also hire developers. I'd be curious
| to learn how the tax reports in these situations work.
| whstl wrote:
| IMO it would be interesting to see those two specific Vereine
| getting volunteers.
| oytis wrote:
| By the headline I thought they were talking about allowing one to
| contribute to OS instead of the newly introduced military
| service, that would be too good of a deal to be true.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Logic of open source:
|
| 1. I don't want to take responsibility for anything I do.
|
| 2. That's why I give away my work for free, so nobody has any
| right to complain. And so I don't have to be embarrassed of any
| shortcomings.
|
| 3. Some people take all my work and give me nothing back.
|
| 4. Now I get really angry that I didn't get anything for all the
| work I did!
|
| 5. So I demand that the government steps in and takes
| responsibility! And that they give me money and tax benefits!
| beanjuiceII wrote:
| yea its wild
| sampullman wrote:
| I don't think 1, 2, and 4 apply to many high profile open
| source projects.
| hagbard_c wrote:
| This message was brought to you by means of the Linux kernel
| (free software) running the GNU user space tools (free
| software) and the Nginx web server (free software) serving as a
| reverse proxy for the HN site (more or less free software, at
| least older versions are available).
|
| All that work, for free, to allow you to complain about people
| writing free software. Entitled, you are.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Don't even get me started on Linux. No IT project has done
| more damage to the Internet than Linux, which has wasted
| billions of dollars worth of time for users and businesses of
| all kind. All because the allure of "free".
|
| People used to be able to create and publish their own
| websites using only graphical interface software on their own
| home computers. Where did that go? Now you have to be a Linux
| system administrator to do the most basic online publishing,
| unless you want to be within somebody else's ecosystem.
|
| How I wish that OS X would have won against Linux for
| servers, and normal people would have better access to
| express themselves online. But here I am, stuck with
| administering Linux servers...
| fschuett wrote:
| Not really, I mean I don't "complain" about companies using my
| code and I don't demand much. I'm happy if they're honest
| enough to send me patches back. But if I know that my code is
| being _used_ by German companies, then, as a German, it 's only
| fair to ask for some breadcrumbs back (about 40-50% of your
| income goes to the state in Germany, it's not like the US). We
| could make "everything private only", but then it becomes very
| hard for people to start their own startups as they have to pay
| for every little thing, like in the 90s.
|
| I do take responsibility for the code I write, often way more
| than some company CEOs ("just sell it bro"). I try to make
| efforts, but in the end I have physical limits. And many open-
| source developers are like that. It's more "well if we would
| put some miniscule effort to supporting open source, we'd all
| be better of, more sovereign, more independent of Big Tech,
| more innovation, etc. etc." - sure, not every GH project is
| "innovation", but many are, so just make some org where you
| could more easily apply for public funding, problem solved.
|
| What I do at least demand is that the Jobcenter stops bothering
| me to "get a real job" (thankfully they're very lenient at
| least where I live). Or that there are more opportunities for
| funding Open Source. There are initiatives like the Prototype
| Fund, which is at least a start, but they are only spending
| about EUR1.8 million per year, which is literal pocket change
| for the German government. Meanwhile literal _billions_ go to
| weapons development for random foreign countries.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Do I understand correctly that you're living on the
| government dole? Then wouldn't that support my original
| point? You can't do free volunteer work for unrelated party A
| and then turn around to unrelated party B and demand that
| they pay you for that. That's just wrong.
|
| Apologies if I misunderstood, but your comment on Jobcenter
| gives this impression.
| fschuett wrote:
| > "You can't do free volunteer work for unrelated party A
| and then turn around to unrelated party B and demand that
| they pay you for that."
|
| The parties are absolutely not "unrelated". You are missing
| that, at least in Germany, the state is effectively a
| _majority shareholder_ in every single company. For an
| average German SW dev salary of EUR80k, the state gets:
| EUR16k in social contributions (calculated on top of the
| salary) + about 32k in corporate tax, income tax, social
| security (again, on the worker side), sales tax, etc = 48k
| in total. So, in total, the German state gets about _50-60%
| of all money earned_. It 's not like in the US where taxes
| are lower.
|
| Now, I "live on the dole" (because nobody wants to hire me
| for some reason) and create infrastructure that German
| companies use. I receive about EUR800/month (subsistence +
| health insurance), which is EUR9,600 per year. That is the
| cost to the state to keep me alive while I maintain
| infrastructure used by German companies.
|
| Looking at the ROI for the German State, if only one single
| developer at a German startup saves a few weeks of work
| using my code, or if a startup can launch faster because of
| my open source work, the state makes that money back
| instantly. That is, assuming only a _single_ company uses
| my code, while in fact, many do so silently.
|
| And on top of that economic unfairness, the current system
| classifies Open Source work as "unemployment/leisure,"
| whereas economically, it is unpaid R&D that fuels the very
| companies funding the state. There are strong differences
| in how "tech infrastructure" gets built in Germany vs the
| US:
|
| - In the US, corporate taxes are much lower. Monopolies
| (Google, Meta, etc.) amass massive capital reserves. They
| effectively privatize public R&D (Go, React, PyTorch). They
| can afford to hire devs to work on OSS full-time because
| the state leaves them the money to do so.
|
| - In Germany, the state takes ~50% of the money out of the
| ecosystem (between high income tax, social security, and
| corporate tax). Small and medium businesses (the
| "Mittelstand") do not have the surplus capital to fund
| "public good" R&D like Google does.
|
| Since the German state extracts the capital that would
| otherwise fund this innovation, I can argue that the state
| has indeed an obligation to reinvest it into the ecosystem.
| Currently, they don't and they just waste the money on
| complete nonsense, wars, etc. and then tell OSS maintainers
| to also "get a real job and do OSS in your spare time".
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Apologies, but I don't buy it. It's very easy for you to
| say that your programming is very beneficial and then in
| an extremely round-about way claim that your government
| gibs is what they rightfully owe you.
|
| I enjoy painting, and could of course go and hang my
| paintings in the public square. Some very important
| lawyers and engineers might walk past my paintings on
| their way to work and be edified by them, thus increasing
| their productivity with 0.3% each day. That would
| translate into thousands of euros in increased tax
| revenue for the German government, so it's only fair that
| they keep paying me my gibs each month for me to keep
| painting, and stop bothering me about getting a job....
|
| But I'd like to assume that your open source code is very
| important and essential for some IT applications. I
| wouldn't doubt that. That also means big businesses are
| using your code and making a lot of money from it, paying
| their engineers juicy salaries with that money. You
| should go to those businesses and demand a job, and not
| take government gibs, which is tax money that has been
| extracted by oppressing people who work low salary jobs.
|
| Of course you are unemployed then, you're working for
| free for big businesses and letting the tax payer pay for
| your upkeep! Why would they hire you when they get your
| labour for free?
|
| That's the evil of open source.
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| I see the danger of corporations "reimbursing" people to work on
| very specific plugins and extensions, that coincidentally match
| the requirement of the corporation, at 12EUR/hour to evade taxes,
| social security contributions and minimum wage. As a German, I
| oppose that petition since "open source" is a vaguely defined
| term, and might not be clearly seperable from commercial work.
| tovej wrote:
| Open source is defined by the Open Source Initiative:
| https://opensource.org/osd
|
| At least it should be. I'm not sure what definition this
| petition would use.
| asmor wrote:
| The petition should use a more restricted definition, because
| the OSI definition only deals with the way software is
| developed and distributed, not how software contributes to
| the common good. That a lot of open source software is
| foundational to how most other software is written is
| incidental for the OSI, but important for this recognition.
|
| In fact I see no reason why you can't already get this
| recognition in the existing legal framework by creating an
| association with a specific scope.
| slightwinder wrote:
| There are usually strict requirements and checks on public
| services, so you can't just declare everything open source and
| gain the benefits. Additionally, paying a wage seems to be
| forbidden, only covering a certain amount of expenses, like
| travel costs, or I guess server-costs, is allowed. So you would
| need a very creative company to somehow convince people to work
| for them with this.
| tcfhgj wrote:
| > I oppose that petition since "open source" is a vaguely
| defined term, and might not be clearly seperable from
| commercial work.
|
| it's a petition, not a law proposal
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| I still opose it as, "I am not signing that as I do not want
| to support that petition. If there was an alternating
| petition to cancel that in-favor petition, I would sign
| that."
| cmckn wrote:
| Username checks out
| crote wrote:
| Aren't those kind of reimbursements usually strictly capped?
|
| For example, if you do volunteer work in The Netherlands you
| can get at most EUR5.60/hour, with a maximum of EUR210/month
| and EUR2100/year. I assume Germany will have similar rules.
|
| EUR12/hour is just about minimum wage. Explaining how that _isn
| 't_ a salary is going to be pretty much impossible - it'll
| rightfully be interpreted as tax fraud. On top of a violation
| of labor laws for paying less than minimum wage, of course.
|
| I do see a lot of benefits, though. There are plenty of people
| who aren't well-off who are doing incredibly valuable work for
| F/LOSS project. If you're holding a conference you _really_
| want to be able to invite those people without putting the
| burden of travel expenses on them: a EUR200 train ticket can
| easily be a dealbreaker for a poor student.
| nkmnz wrote:
| Why should "the burden of travel expenses" (lol) go away by
| creating a tax exemption? The organization paying for the
| ticket will OF COURSE still require the receipt.
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| I picked 12EUR because I have heard of volunteers getting
| that. Depending on the kind of the work there can also be a
| fixed travel-reimbursement. I.e. donating blood gets you
| 20EUR for roughly 60minutes of "work".
| port11 wrote:
| Where is this happening? AFAIK most (all?) of the EU
| strictly forbids being paid for blood or blood component
| donations outside of very specific research.
|
| (As a donor I tried to sell blood when I couldn't afford
| rent and food, but it seemed impossible.)
| Tarsul wrote:
| In Germany you can get 20 Euros for blood donations (at
| least at the Deutsches Rotes Kreuz).
| f1shy wrote:
| You make it sound as signing the petition will result directly
| in a law with exactly that text. It is just a petition, so that
| some commission on the parliament takes that idea, discuss,
| process it, and eventually will be integrated in a law, where
| all that concerns will hopefully be addressed. If you want to
| be sure this discussion is worked with your ideas and ideology,
| make sure to vote correctly in the parliamentary elections. But
| not asking the parliament to initiate a debate, because a term
| in there is "poorly" defined, seems to me, not the best way of
| action.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| I don't think it'll go down as you said, but imagining if it
| does anyways: so what? As long as the software ends up FOSS,
| everyone would be able to take advantage of it, even if the
| corporations focus on their own uses first.
|
| Hell, most FOSS today was created by a single
| individual/organization for themselves, figured it might be
| useful for others so they publish it under some FOSS-compatible
| license. That then others found it useful is the cherry on the
| top, not the core motivation.
| port11 wrote:
| I don't know about Germany but in Belgium "you cannot do
| voluntary work for a private individual or a business."
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Maybe, but in the US, we can't deduct "sweat equity."
|
| I probably do hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of work,
| for free. It would be nice to be able to use some of that, as a
| tax break. It would be a drop in the bucket, compared to the
| monster breaks corporations get.
|
| I would be more worried about rigidly defining "open source."
| We see battles on HN, about the definition of "open source." It
| could end up specifying something like only release of GPL-
| licensed code is allowed, which might seem OK, but that's sort
| of taking a "political" stance.
|
| I release all my stuff MIT (usually). That's mainly because I
| don't care if anyone takes it, and gets rich (Fat chance,
| anyway. My stuff isn't _that_ amazing), and I 'm not interested
| in coercing anyone else to take my political stance. I just
| don't want some bunghole suing me for something out of my
| control.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Interestingly there is a DIN standard for open source hardware
| https://www.dinmedia.de/en/technical-rule/din-spec-3105-1/32...
| pessimizer wrote:
| The license has to be central to something like this, and it has
| got to be copyleft and/or even some sort of nationalist German-
| MIT license that only grants permission to German citizens and
| companies. You can't let the German taxpayer get exploited for
| the benefit of foreign corporations.
|
| The "spirit of open source" is not real. If you think that the
| only _real_ gift is MIT-style permissively licensed stuff, you
| should be _proud_ not to be recognized by the government. You
| should ask for no credit and no reward. Christmas gifts you buy
| for someone are taxed, and are not considered charitable
| contributions.
|
| Otherwise, it is a great and vital idea. "Open source" is just
| not specific enough. It may even exclude GPL.
| lionkor wrote:
| How does the tax-payer lose money on this? Is there money from
| the government involved here?
| amelius wrote:
| Shouldn't open source be funded like scientific research is
| funded?
| nwellnhof wrote:
| Why not petition to change SS 52 AO directly? I made such a
| petition a couple of years ago but didn't get around to promote
| it: https://www.openpetition.de/petition/online/anerkennung-
| der-...
| mkoubaa wrote:
| Also waiting for a prolific open source contributor to be
| canonized as a saint.
| layer8 wrote:
| They would need to have performed miracles, and also have died.
| firefax wrote:
| I'm a big fan of Germany -- my most enjoyable vacation was riding
| around DE on DB, I've done some German language classes and read
| extensively about it's history. (I think people hyperfocus on
| WWII out of morbid curiosity and skip over the atrocities of the
| Stasi.)
|
| The last time I was there, I had the poor luck to schedule my
| train out of Berlin as a protest was being held. People were
| super polite, parting ways for me then going back to their thing.
| One of the leaders must have heard through the grapevine I was a
| travelling academic and tried to put me on the spot if I
| "supported" the protest. (They were unhappy about the Trans
| Pacific Partnership).
|
| I told him I study privacy, not law nor economics so I don't feel
| qualified to comment on a trade agreement, but I certainly
| support their right to express their opinion.
|
| And with that, what very little hostility I'd encountered that
| day vanished, and I went off to eat my currywurst, drink my beer,
| and watch some videos on my laptop while waiting for my train.
|
| I'm going to pause and say maybe this is the kind of policy
| question we should leave to the citizens of said country... it
| seems to center around extremely technical terms in a legal
| system a lot of us on (overwhelmingly American) HN have very
| little understanding.
|
| Germany has a history of being extremely supportive of open
| source -- when I was exploring the clubs, the only black shirt I
| had was one with a giant Firefox logo, and I got a lot of postive
| feedback and even let past the line at one place, so I'd be
| curious what German citizens have to say on the matter before
| forming my own opinion.
| port11 wrote:
| Germany is a wonderful place -- and aside from a few racist
| remarks when I grew my beard -- I'm forever grateful for what
| that country did to my mental health, career, and future.
|
| Indeed it should be up to Germans to decide how to handle this,
| but given their general respect for The Common Good, I'm
| positive about such a law. Godspeed!
| djij wrote:
| Petition to pretend that we don't live in a global dystopia and
| we can contribute to a global commons without it being co-opted
| by transnational corporations that will eventually harvest all
| our emotional attachments
| smokel wrote:
| It's worse, gravity is constantly trying to kill us, and the
| sun bombards us with lethal radiation.
| desman wrote:
| The main point they are making is that open source software is
| creating public good/value and needs to be recognized as a civic
| service. The problem I have with it is that in the majority of
| cases it doesn't create any value at all, there are plenty of
| open source projects that are not illegal but net harmful for
| public interest. Knowing how Germans usually distinguish good
| from evil (paperwork/bureaucracy/official review and
| certifications), this will likely end up with yet another verse
| of Vogon poetry one would need to engage with to get a tax break.
| The recipients of benefits will likely be those who will go for
| the trouble of proving that they are "good open source". It is
| highly likely that actual net benefactors of society will not
| condescend to do this paperwork and. end up not getting the
| proposed benefits.
| martin-t wrote:
| We shouldn't shoot down good ideas just because a bad
| implementation is possible.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| is that what the GP is doing? I read their comment as
| shooting down a bad implementation until a good one is
| presented.
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