Petition for Recognition of Work on Open-Source as Volunteering in Germany
by numeri on 2/4/2026, 4:46:15 AM
Comments
by: mschild
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.<p>If you make a petition with the official website and it passes they have to deal with it, even if its a rejection.<p><a href="https://epetitionen.bundestag.de/epet/peteinreichen.html" rel="nofollow">https://epetitionen.bundestag.de/epet/peteinreichen.html</a>
2/4/2026, 5:49:28 AM
by: zamadatix
Previous discussion (141 comments) which used the German version of the URL a few months back: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46078770">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46078770</a>
2/4/2026, 7:02:53 AM
by: ggm
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.<p>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.<p>How does an auditor know?
2/4/2026, 6:38:11 AM
by: dhruv3006
this is such a great initiative but I fear this may get exploited without proper structure.
2/4/2026, 6:53:05 AM
by: phendrenad2
> Compensations could be paid tax-exempt<p>I think this is the real killer feature here. Software companies could save money by simply open-sourcing parts of their software.
2/4/2026, 6:35:58 AM
by: thaumasiotes
What does it mean for volunteering to be "recognized" in Germany?
2/4/2026, 6:09:57 AM
by: system2
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.
2/4/2026, 7:14:54 AM
by: Uptrenda
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?
2/4/2026, 6:59:18 AM
by: on_the_train
It's ok to have a hobby. Not everything needs to be minmaxed to extract the maximum amount of money from the system.
2/4/2026, 6:56:11 AM
by: vasco
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.<p>On an individual basis I don't think giving tax breaks to anyone with a chatGPT tab open makes sense.
2/4/2026, 6:37:08 AM
by: jaco6
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2/4/2026, 7:04:07 AM
by: fleroviumna
[dead]
2/4/2026, 6:54:14 AM