verein

Schwimm Verein Donaukanal (Swim Club Danube Canal) is one of the signatories of the Swimmable Cities movement.

Codeberg has a Verein with Gemeinnützigkeit, which seems a superior, already established, way to accomplish this.

If you want any of this, why don't you found a Verein and have open source activities as the purpose?

Maybe you are right and an Verein would be a better venue for this.

They are set up as a eingetragener Verein (registered voluntary association).

The Verein für Raumfahrt, the society for space flight, which von Braun joined when he was 28, was founded after Oberth's book on space travel using rockets.

Codeberg is gemeinnützige (for the public benefit) are there any examples of a Verein being denied gemeinnützigkeit based on the fact that open source development is not a recognized Ehrenamt?

The Riedbahn between Frankfurt and Mannheim is currently being redone and they were short on Diesel engines, so one Verein for historic railroad equipment offered their steam engine and was accepted.

The demands of the petition would be solved by just founding a Verein (which is exactly the structure you want to organize volunteer activity), but as you said, if you wanted to interpret the petition as negatively as possible, the petition wants to avoid having a Verein, which enforces a certain degree of openness and transparency about finances.

V." in Germany is "eingetragener Verein", "registered association" and is a form of association that's extremely common and use for all kinds of things, e.g.

The hints are "Steirisch" (Styrian) and "Buachstoana" (looks like a phonetic spelling of a Bavarian/Austrian dialect word as opposed to Swiss German and "Verein" (club/association).

I definitely do not believe that the activities being done as part of an Ehrenamt are stupid What I wanted to express is that it is "just" various forms of volunteer work, which ranges between some occasional organizational work in a Verein to doing hard physical labor at 3 in the night.

;) Hint: there is an "english-speakers' Verein" > (which will be completely useless outside of Switzerland) And even within switzerland, it will probably be more useful in Ticino than in western switzerland, where the kids learn standard german in school.

If you want to have legal protections and a proper governance structure you would found a Verein.

Most of mainstream politics in Germany is captured by special interests groups, old dudes from some Verein, Kammer or other medieval guild, lobbying to preserve their moats and privileges.

And as a German I would like to echo what others said about clubs in germany: I have met half of my friendgroup and my long-term partner in a Verein.