Petition recognizing opensource work
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Hi all,
I thought I'd bring some attention to a petition that is currently being
held.
[0]
It aims to gets opensource work officially recognized as volunteer work
in Germany (at a legal level). Volunteer work in Germany e.g. has tax
benefits, and this would mean opensource work would have the same status
as e.g. being a volunteer firefighter.
While we obviously do a ton of volunteer work, the public recognition is
spotty at best. Some countries like France have introduced laws to
address this. If the petition gains 30.000 signatures from within
Germany (quorum) [1], the German parliament must discuss the issue. This
does not mean it'll make it into law, but nevertheless, this brings the
issue on the agenda. If you are not from Germany, you can still sign to
show your support (the signature does not count towards the quorum).
I'll go out on a leg and guess that 90% of all Debian work is done by
contributors in their freetime, and IMO such work should be supported.
Hoping for better recognition of free software work,
werdahias
PS: Disclaimer: I am not affiliated in any way with the initiator
Links:
[0]: https://www.openpetition.de/petition/online/recognition-of-work-on-open-source-as-volunteering-in-germany
[1]:
https://www.openpetition.de/blog/blog/2017/04/07/das-quorum-auf-openpetition
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