Hacker News Reader

I think there's a special niche with civic technology, the kind of public-benefit projects this is also aimed at: most European societies already have this deal.

It's public broadcasting systems. In Germany, the pot is 7.6bn per year - basically, because we believe it's a good idea to have a well-funded set of institutions in the public sphere.

I'd argue that doing stuff like GPG, a web site to track bills through Parliament or some important infra isn't actually that much different.

So if we can decide to get rid of an old radio station or two, there's plenty of money already allocated - it just needs to be shuffled around a bit.

Even though the public broadcasting system started to produce more fluff content on ARD and ZDF in the last decade, they also opened a couple channels like Phoenix and ZDF Info which are aiming to reach the quality level of BBC productions. I don't know if it's just having more money and therefore the quality content growing in proportion. Either way, the original purpose of the publicly funded broadcasting service is very limited and the funds are misused for fluff. If half of the programming is similar to what you find on the US hallmark or bravo networks, it's easy to understand people's reluctance to pay the per-household mandatory tax (legally not a tax, but technically the same thing). I mean, given that people need access chips with a per annum fee for many HD channels today, I could totally get behind a scheme where the publicly funded channels are reduced to what they have to provide by law and thereby requiring just a tiny part of the funds they do now. Then either the mandatory fee is reduced or used for, as you suggested, FOSS code.

Anyway, I like your train of thought. We could start by making the national tax tool open source so that there's a proper Linux port, because it's written with Qt already.

GPG, due to the safety requirements and reliance in critical situations, would do well with a rewrite in a different language that can still expose a C API. For good integration of the C API (aka no GC) there aren't many languages available to build it in. Maybe ATS2 or Rust. Such a rewrite is something the GPG devs are highly unlikely to do for obvious reasons, but it's something that can be publicly funded as a long-term project.

They are buying the rights to the Olympics and to the World and European Cup every time, getting into bidding wars with private stations. Their argument is, that many people will stick around to watch the news in the half-time so they can fulfill their educational mandate.

They could save billions buy just letting RTL or Pro7/Sat1 show sports. UEFA and FIFA restrict the material anyways, so the main difference would be more boulevard half-time news while everybody is getting up to get a new beer.

They stopped showing Tour de France a few years ago, when the doping scandals hit its highs and literally nobody cares.

Also - and here comes the fucked up part: Showing the events publicly on a stage was forbidden recently, since this requires another set of licensing so you have to pay to visit these stages even though every German household already paid for the license through ARD/ZDF.

Fun fact 2: Austrians do not pay and can watch it anyway.

And in some countries the tax is a one-time payment included in the price of a tv, radio, etc. That's better in my opinion, and it may force them to produce just what the mandate requires, not daily soaps, game shows, all the while showing ads during the day. If we're consequent, we could easily reduce it to two channels, with an hour per day where the local news are available on an otherwise national broadcast. This is already available on the WDR feeds to some extent. One would be Phoenix++ (plus partially localized Phoenix++ feed) and the other ZDFInfo++. Most of the content is repeated anyway, so two channels with on-demand view on the website is sufficient.

Game shows and other forms of entertainment are not about education and keeping the population informed via government funded channels. You might argue it's too late to change it now, but the TV landscape would quickly adjust and formats would move to other networks where they belong and are still broadcast without DRM.

The whole 7.6bn/year fund being used for stuff people wouldn't actively select to pay that much for problem reminds me of the misappropriation of the road tax of 8bn/year which trucks pay on a per-km basis. 8bn should be more than enough to build and maintain public roads, but it's apparently used for other needs, all because taxes are not purpose-bound by law. What's the political solution? They're trying to extend highway taxes to private vehicles too in order to build roads. The German government is in dire need of a more logical treasury that's accountable to the electorate outside of 4-year-period-elections for misappropriation or over-/under-spending. If the roads in a city are not maintained for decades, then those paying vehicle tax and other annual fees, must have a right to refuse payment, just like they can do with their landlord. After all, taxes are payments to your national landlord, nothing else.

In general I agree with you, taxes and tax-like systems (church, healthcare, social systems, IHK and the others, broadcast) should be separated as much as possible, but ultimately the system will collapse if we do so. The social systems cannot fund themselves and the outlook is even worse. I think it is not even theoretically possible to cut the subsidies for the pension funds, and even if it was possible, it would choke the young generation because of the increased dues all while Germany already has the second lowest birth rate in the world. The birth rate would fall even lower, thus increasing the costs for the next generation even higher.

The bullshit expenses like broadcast and so on can absolutely be reformed, but that's just a few billions here and there. The overwhelming majority of the spending (130 bn € per year, next biggest is the military with just 34 bn €) for the social system cannot decrease, thanks to the demographic it has to be increased every year until the birth rate is stabilized, which as described cannot happen if young people are busy paying for pensions.

And btw. the tax revenue from federal roads was 6 bn € last year, while the the ministry of transport spend 8 bn € on it's federal roads. Of course there are also 33bn revenue from the gas tax, which was introduced with the argument that roads need to be paid for, but yeah as described, if we cut the tax, pension funds will die. Revenue from VAT and income taxes are just ~ 80 bn € each, appropriate spending would just collapse the system instantly.

Here are the sources as an interactive chart, unfortunately only in German: https://www.bundeshaushalt-info.de/

You're right, but I think that the population can be educated and convinced of the necessity of certain taxes without them feeling ripped off. Therefore, I have this hope that a more transparent and purpose-bound tax system can work and finally discourage tax payers from complaining about taxes as if infrastructure and services grow on trees. What I mean is that I've met many people who view tax evasion as a national sport of sorts, and the professionalism rises the higher their income, unfortunately, while those with lower income are less capable of leaving 30 to 50 percent of their income on the table. I'm not advocating a rich-people tax or anything like that. Just apply tax laws evenly, without making exceptions or implementing loop-holes for those who can hire a tax lawyer/accountant. I believe that once people know why certain taxes are paid and see what they're used for, they will be less likely to be frustrated about it. Now, there's the risk of people not caring about issues somewhere else and thus not wanting to support that, but that also can be solved with education. There's so much useless stuff put into people's minds via psycho-advanced ad campaigns that it's possible to use that for good as well.

With all that being said, maybe the Germans are less likely to be educable in that regard, and thus you're perhaps right that a fair and logical tax system won't fly. If so, it might work in Japan's society.

This is obviously tangential to the original issue, but your interpretation of the task given to the public broadcast stations is incredibly narrow. The law explicitly includes social and cultural aspects and deliberately does not limit the task to dissemination of news or educational tasks only. Entertainment is explicitly included in the mandate. And as much as I dislike soaps, most of the music played on the radio in general, most game shows, they definitely are part of our culture, thus covered by the mandate:

    § 11 Auftrag
    
    Auftrag  der  öffentlich-rechtlichen  Rundfunkanstalten  ist,  durch  die  
    Herstellung  und  Verbreitung  ihrer  Angebote  als  Medium  und  Faktor  des
    Prozesses  freier  individueller  und  öffentlicher  Meinungsbildung  zu  
    wirken  und  dadurch  die  demokratischen,  sozialen  und  
    kulturellen  Bedürfnisse  der  Gesellschaft  zu  erfüllen.  
    Die öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunkanstalten haben in  ihren Angeboten einen 
    umfassenden Überblick über das internationale, europäische, nationale und regionale
    Geschehen in allen wesentlichen Lebensbereichen zu geben. Sie sollen hierdurch die
    internationale Verständigung, die europäische Integration und den gesell-
    schaftlichen  Zusammenhalt  in  Bund  und  Ländern  fördern.  Ihre  Angebote  haben  
    der  Bildung,  Information,  Beratung und Unterhaltung zu dienen. Sie haben Beiträge
    insbesondere zur Kultur anzubieten. Auch Unterhaltung soll einem öffentlich-rechtlichen
    Angebotsprofil entsprechen.

http://www.die-medienanstalten.de/fileadmin/Download/Rechtsg...

That's the law, yes, but when it was written there weren't private TV networks. Therefore, it needs to be updated. I'm not saying there shouldn't be culture per se, but the amount of money spent in the networks is disproportionate to the positive effect it has these days. Say they spent the money on mobile apps and websites, then maybe it would be more contemporary-appropriate.

The main issue isn't with the 18 EURO per month, it's how it's used. If they cannot use it appropriately, it should be at least cut back so that it's just 5 EURO per month.

One could argue that technologically we could and probably should easily replace most of the programming with something that requires paid-for access keys. That way, one can reduce the mandatory part to a bare minimum while still allowing those who want it to get rest of the content. Then the argument would be that it has to be accessible by everyone, though with that argument you could say analog TV may not be turned off as long as there is still one analog TV set around.

I'm glad that Germany doesn't force a church tax or alternative payment to some similar org like Finland or many other nations do. At least one bug that doesn't exist in Germany.

> That's the law, yes, but when it was written there weren't private TV networks

The version I quoted is from the 2013. Private TV and radio existed by then. It has been reworked and rewritten, new media such as apps and online media has been included in the scope, partially by the constitutional court. The actors that try and prevent that as much as possible are the private TV stations.

> I'm not saying there shouldn't be culture per se,

But you did: "to produce just what the mandate requires, not daily soaps, game shows, " (taken from your previous post)

> but the amount of money spent in the networks is disproportionate to the positive effect it has these days.

[citation needed] A lot of german tv shows and niche content would not be produced if not for the public broadcast. They also produce a lot of stuff I consider waste, but that's my personal opinion, others may like it. I dislike opera and dance theater as well, but meh - it's still state sponsored as are other cultural venues that I do frequent and others may abhor. Funding culture is a wasteful process per se. The alternative is privatization of culture, so that mainly culture survives that either appeals to a large enough part of society or to a private wealthy donor.

> One could argue that technologically we could and probably should easily replace most of the programming with something that requires paid-for access keys. That way, one can reduce the mandatory part to a bare minimum while still allowing those who want it to get rest of the content. Then the argument would be that it has to be accessible by everyone, though with that argument you could say analog TV may not be turned off as long as there is still one analog TV set around.

This is contrary to the idea. The whole mandate aims at having a broadly and freely accessible canon of news, educational and cultural media that reflects as much of our society as possible.

> The version I quoted is from the 2013. Private TV and radio existed by then. It has been reworked

Figured as much based on some of the text.

> and rewritten, new media such as apps and online media has been included in the scope, partially by the constitutional court. The actors that try and prevent that as much as possible are the private TV stations.

Yeah, I never understood why someone like RTL would be opposed to ARD or ZDF's online content. the only explanation I got was that they want to limit where the content is available how and see it as a competition, otherwise why would they be the cause for only limited time online availability of publicly funded videos. I wonder how it's handled with BBC's iPlayer and if they also have an expiry date demanded by private media.

> But you did: "to produce just what the mandate requires, not daily soaps, game shows, " (taken from your previous post)

I know, though I don't consider the content cited here culture, and I may be wrong about that, yes. My interpretation of the cultural aspect is to preserve and document the genuine culture of Germany so that it's visible to Germans and foreigners alike. Stuff like game shows or soaps are pretty much the same globally, so there's nothing interesting German-culture-wise in them. In the past cultures used to be very different but with globalization and the massive reach of Hollywood I'd say culture has been homogenized in popular content to more than 95%. Legally speaking, though, you're right.

> Yeah, I never understood why someone like RTL would be opposed to ARD or ZDF's online content. the only explanation I got was that they want to limit where the content is available how and see it as a competition, otherwise why would they be the cause for only limited time online availability of publicly funded videos. I wonder how it's handled with BBC's iPlayer and if they also have an expiry date demanded by private media.

RTL is owned by Bertelsmann, which owns roughly every media company in Germany.

My problem is that they are competing with private companies. Operas are state-sponsored, because they cannot compete in a free market and would die. But there are plenty of soap operas on private networks, too. We would not lose anything if they would stop producing those. Same with sport events. I think the private networks are right: It is unfair and wasteful to create a state-sponsored entity, which has an ridiculous amount of funding and can therefore out-compete private companies, which would create the same service.

Exactly. If they really want to fund expensive content, which is not produced by private media, then focus on things like documentaries. I don't mean the stuff that's broadcast on current day Discovery or History channels, but the stuff ZDF and BBC show where unsurprisingly a disproportionately large amount are synchronized-to-German BBC productions. It seems that the Brits do it better.

I also agree about theater and opera, though the tickets for those aren't cheap and you don't get a free ticket just because you paid for public broadcasts.

State sponsored broadcast by definition compete with private companies by offering alternative content. Operas do as well. They compete with movie theaters, private stages, TV and all alternate forms of entertainment.

> But there are plenty of soap operas on private networks, too. We would not lose anything if they would stop producing those [...] private companies, which would create the same service.

Which is questionable at least: Take Lindenstraße for example: I personally dislike it but without question is has been on the forefront of bringing important topics to the TV screen and probably the most diverse cast of all soap operas produced in germany. The english wikipedia page only has a short paragraph, read the german page if you can: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindenstra%C3%9Fe#Cast Notable example are showing homosexuality in 1986, the first homosexual kiss in 1987 (the actors received death threats as a consequence), ... No private soap opera in germany dares to touch sensitive topics. American soaps are a bad substitute.

"""We could start by making the national tax tool open source so that there's a proper Linux port, because it's written with Qt already."""

Absolutely this. Would allow me to get rid of my final Windows VM. I rage about this every now and then...usually around May :P

I think the words you are looking for are "infrastructural software".. Software that works as infrastructure, such as linux, web browsers, databases, ie, mostly anything that we can build other more specific software on top of, has the tendency to become open source. And one cannot deny the increased value that that software brings, for instance, linux servers and open source browsers and all the economy around the internet..

So, why shouldn't there be a FOSS org that collects donations to compensate maintainers of projects?

GNU does this I believe...

How effective are them at this? Which high importance projects have they financed?

Legitimate questions, I'm not implying anything here

GCC and Emacs spring to mind :-)

I'm unaware of any Emacs or GCC dev being paid by the FSF. From what I recall, the Emacs maintainers do it as a hobby, and the GCC maintainers are employed by the likes of Red Hat to work on it. However, if what you're implying is true, I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong :).

Perhaps not at the moment, but you can read all about the woes Zawinski had with the guy GNU hired to work on Emacs that led to the XEmacs fork...

Interesting read https://www.jwz.org/doc/lemacs.html

There's a redirect to imgur if the referrer is hacker news.

Not many people other than JWZ can pull that off without pissing off people. Reminds of the time when MSN.com hot-linked to some poor guy's website in a front-page article. What did the guy do? Replace the image with a copy of the original goatse photo.

There are some organisations/groups which seem to be effective in actually paying people.

There is a group of Debian developers that collect funding and pay Debian developers/maintainers to maintain LTS for Debian releases:

https://www.freexian.com/en/services/debian-lts.html

https://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/Freexian+LTS/

The FreeBSD Foundation also hires developers to do actual work:

https://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-2016-04-2016-06.h...

https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/what-we-do/projects/#curre...

However, I think such initiatives are typically highly underfunded. Like OpenSSH/{Open,Libre}SSL/GnuPG, everyone uses the software, few companies/individuals chip in in a significant way.

Getting a copy of "The Debian Administrator's Handbook" also helps support Raphaël Hertzog and Roland Mas keep doing good work.

I purchased a recent copy of the book (covering Debian 8), and while there are things I'd like more details about, I find it a good resource to have on hand.

FSF collects money for infrastructure etc.

Generally the GNU project maintainers are not paid by the FSF. Mostly they're paid through the likes of Red Hat etc., with varying overlap between day job and maintainership

You might be interested in viewing this GitHub project [1] that explores in details a multitude of the available options for financing FOSS projects.

A very handy guide if you ask me.

[1]: https://github.com/nayafia/lemonade-stand