Comment by throwaway89201
5 days ago
Nobody is LARPing an Eingetragener Verein, they're just being one, and the law requires them to have a board and presidium.
As they got hundreds of votes on the issue, that means tens of thousands of euros in membership contributions. It doesn't seem unreasonable to want to create a legal entity for that, and an e.V. is easier to set up in the beginning (although it can lead to a lot of drama later).
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Germany requires e.Vs to have democratic governance as a response / reaction to what happened during WW2, where every organization was retooled to run under "Führerprinzip" aka, one person decides everything, zero democracy or accountability. Reconstruction decided this was really fucking bad, and made all organizations required to be the polar opposite
You are American? American non profit associations must have officers and a board of directors.
I am, and I'm sure there are rules for non-profits in the US that are just as tedious! Like I said in a different comment, I didn't realize Codeberg had a whole German non-profit thing behind it.
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I have German background, so that was a genuine concern for me when I started using Codeberg 3 years ago. It's not a great surprise that they end up being more interested in rulemaking around FOSS hosting than in FOSS hosting itself.
https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm is a good look at why taking themselves seriously enough to have a formal governance structure is a good thing for a healthy organisation of any sort.