Germans are great. Especially when they do nice things.

A lot of German people contribute to open-source projects in their spare time – unpaid, often for years. And yet, under Germany's tax law, this work is not recognized as volunteer work (Ehrenamt) – unlike club work, youth work, or emergency services.

A petition to the German Bundestag's petitions committee is calling for equal treatment.

Concretely, this would mean:

🔴 Tax-free expense allowances (Ehrenamts-/Übungsleiterpauschale)

⚪ Easier non-profit status (§52 AO) for open-source projects

🟢 Better liability protection for open source maintainers (analogous to §31a BGB)

🔵 Legally secure donation receipts and cost reimbursement

This would be a huge boost to the open source community.

Petition: https://www.openpetition.de/petition/online/anerkennung-von-open-source-arbeit-als-ehrenamt-in-deutschland

Please sign it. It only takes 2 minutes.

If you're not in Germany, sharing it with people who are would still help a lot.

Thank you 🙏

[+] [S] -20 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

They may as well be. Greg Brokeman is an animal.

He won a silver medal in the 2006 International Chemistry Olympiad. In 2003, 2005, and 2007, he attended Canada/USA Mathcamp, a summer program for mathematically talented high-school students. In 2008, Brockman enrolled at Harvard University but left a year later, briefly enrolling at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He is always 10 steps ahead of ordinary people. He sees the future around the corner. His day is simple. He wakes up. He eats perfectly healthy food. He exerces thanks to a world class trainer. He showers. Then he does some math. He is driven to work in armored vehicle. On his phone, there are the numbers of world leaders and billionaires.

Greg Brokeman isn't an ordinary human. He is a thinking machine.

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  • [–] [S] 29 points 2 months ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

    I love Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, but this is some serious bullshit.

    You won the election. It's over. The pro-car asshole was defeated.

    Now it's time to be BOLD. Democracy is great, but we can't keep having debates. Do these angry residents have scientific evidence that their ideas will actually improve the city? No. So fuck them.

    The masses are not always right. Real leadership means you need to accept to be temporarly unpopular when you know you are right.

    I don't like Billionaires, but Mike Bloomberg was a great New York City mayor precisely because he didn't give a shit about being popular as long as the data was on his side. He banned smoking in bars. He banned smoking in restaurants. He mandated calorie counts on chain restaurant menus. He pedestrianized much of Times Square. He created the Citi Bike Program. He invested in bike lanes. People kept whining. He just ignored them.

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