zlacker

What does it mean for volunteering to be "recognized" in Germany?

>>thauma+(OP)
Tax exempts (I'm not a German, but I was curious about the same and this is what ChatGPT told me :) )

>>thauma+(OP)
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.

>>thauma+(OP)
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.

>>zeeZ+i5
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?"

>>thauma+(OP)
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.

>>thauma+C6
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?

>>Mounta+17
But in that case, what is this petition hoping to achieve?

>>thauma+o7
Maybe this would have helped with something like Mastodon losing non-profit status? https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2024/04/mastodon-forms-new-u.s...

>>thauma+C6
the punishment argument makes no sense. it is already a problem if someone volunteers in any capacity and then commits a crime. sometimes community service is not the right punishment.

>>em-bee+Yo
Community service is not supposed to be a punishment but rather an opportunity to offset wrongs done by doing more good than the average person. If someone was already doing good deeds before then that is not an issue. If anything, courts already consider past good deeds when determining sentencing.

It's obviously not something that is an appropriate remedy for all crimes.