Petition to formally recognize open source work as civic service in Germany

I assume only German citizens can sign this? I upvoted here if that helps, because it sounds like a great initiative, maybe if this gains traction this can go europe wide?

The difficult part is measuring work done I'm afraid though. For volunteer work as e.g. reading books to kids or cleaning streets it's relatively easy to see that things are happening, even if some are better/faster than others. Unless you're going to force people to work in live calls or whatever, or just trust self-reporting, that's going to be hard, no?

Or do you mean more like subsidies for nonprofits working in open source?

Either way, good initiative, I hope for its success!

This is an awesome idea! So basically you can do open source work if you're between jobs. Keeps your skills, gets you paid and gives back.

Open-Source-Software builds the foundations of digital infrastructure in big parts - in administration, economy, science and daily life. Even the current coalition agreement of the Federal Government mentions Open-Source-Software as a fundamental building block for the achievement of digital sovereignty.

However, the work done by thousands of volunteers for this goal is not recognised as volunteering, neither fiscally nor in terms of funding. This imbalance between societal importance and legal status has to be corrected.

Therefore, as an active contributor to Open-Source-Projects, I call for work on Open-Source to be recognised as volunteering for the common good – of equal rank as volunteer work for associations, youth work or ambulance service.

Do crime and get sentenced to 80 hour open source contribution would be awesome

That's really funny bullshit petition. Ehrenamt is unpaid working with a minimal tax break from the government. That's the wrong way to promote open source. The right way is "public money public code" and funding projects.

Sure, but why?