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.
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).
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.
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?"
True. It would need to be something associated with a registered non-profit organization/NGO. But isn't that already the case with other types of volunteer work?
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.
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?
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
Furthermore, this petition should be written in German as well...
Like this?
https://www.openpetition.de/petition/online/anerkennung-von-...
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.
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?
Previous discussion (141 comments) which used the German version of the URL a few months back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46078770
this is such a great initiative but I fear this may get exploited without proper structure.
What does it mean for volunteering to be "recognized" in Germany?
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.
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.
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?"
True. It would need to be something associated with a registered non-profit organization/NGO. But isn't that already the case with other types of volunteer work?
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.
Tax exempts (I'm not a German, but I was curious about the same and this is what ChatGPT told me :) )
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?
> 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.
Interesting.
Similarly R&D tax incentives could be made to only apply if the R&D is publically available (for study, and any use)
It's ok to have a hobby. Not everything needs to be minmaxed to extract the maximum amount of money from the system.
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.