3mo ago

buy-european.net Philosophy

Hi, quick question about the website, which is evolving quite fabulous.

The page is operated and sponsored by a German company Hanseatic Bits UG (haftungsbeschränkt) & Co. KG .

I'm wondering: what the philosophy behind the project is? How is the funding taking place? What will happen to the crowd-sourced data and the joint effort? Don't get me wrong, but putting effort in a closed source database that belongs to a company, which then claims the copyright of said database (German Urheberrecht), is something I would like to discuss upfront.

38 comments

We raised the point with @buyeuropean@feddit.org some time back.
It seems like German law requires you to have an Impressum page for every website posted. He used the company they had to do so, as it was easier from a liability perspective. The answers he provided were considered good enough at the time by the !buyeuropean@feddit.uk mods.
Ping @Lazycog@sopuli.xyz, @Sunshine@lemmy.ca, @Emperor@feddit.uk
Not too sure about the funding and legal aspects.
- Yes, If you’re using a website commercially you’re obliged to have an Impressum. I’m no lawyer but a pure database without affiliate links shouldn’t be commercial, yet.
  Anyhow I would like to hear some words from the project team about funding and commitment and the general idea.
  After all you could have things open sourced, or found non-profit organizations. Many ways of dealing with that.
  
  It's not just for commercial websites, any website that provides any kind of content is subject to Impressumspflicht. AFAIK strictly private/personal websites are exempt in theory, however in Germany it's a fun pastime for asshole lawyers to automatedly search the web for websites w/o impressum and extort some bucks off some poor granny's recipe blog, so it's better to be safe than sorry. And since people generally don't want to put their full private address on the web and most don't have have a postbox or something like that, I totally get why they'd use the company for simplicity.
  
  Feddit.org isn't commercial, but has an Impressum too: https://feddit.org/legal
  
  From the Matrix chat, @buyeuropean@feddit.org
  I will write a reply and then we have something on lemmy to refer to as well…will do so the next days.
Thanks for your kind words and thoughtful questions! :)
Here’s the quick breakdown:
Why a Company?
In Germany, liability protection is essential for any public project. Using an existing company (a common practice) minimizes personal risk. Many projects operate similarly - they just don’t always highlight their legal structure. We’re transparent because the law requires an imprint, not because we’re "corporate".
Data Ownership
Public facts (e.g., product/company names) can’t be copyrighted. Contributors' data remains public knowledge. We only claim copyright on our own original content and creative work. We also double-check all hints submitted and then create the complete data set.
Why Not Open Source?
We respect open-source ideals but saw other projects struggle with clutter/inefficiency. We opted for a focused, curated approach to keep the database simple and user-friendly which seems to work exactly as intended based on your and other users' feedback.
Why Not Non-Profit?
First of all, we started the project overnight and therefore opted for an existing structure. German non-profits require heavy paperwork and oversight - overkill for a small, revenue-free project that we already invest a lot of time in but want to limit the financial spending. Also: No donations = no risk of mismanagement, which unfortunately happens left and right in the non-profit world.
Therefore personally what I would care about as a user or contributor:
How are donations used (if any)?
How is the revenue used (if any)? There could be great reasons to generate revenue to further grow the project!
Is there transfer of ownership of work that can actually be copyrighted if I contribute?
Why is it a company and not a non-profit?
Our Intent
This is a passion project:
To support a cause we care about.
To learn and experiment with new technology.
To offer a streamlined database that follows our vision.
Hope this helps and can be used as a reference in the future as these valid questions came up before and we answered them via other channels in the past.
Although nobody asked here yet: We went with .net as whatever we thought was a catchy name was not available in the .eu domain space. We obviously would have chosen .eu if it was available but people registered all those domain names to then not use same as it often happens on the Internet.
- Why Not Open Source? We respect open-source ideals but saw other projects struggle with clutter/inefficiency. We opted for a focused, curated approach to keep the database simple and user-friendly which seems to work exactly as intended based on your and other users' feedback.
  I think you're confusing open-source with user-contributed. I understand from your message why you want to curate data instead of accepting and showing many people's contributions, but not why you wouldn't make the site's code publicly available.
  
  Generally it would be possible for both the code and the data to be open source.
  What would be the benefit of open source code?
  A benefit would be code contributions that increase security. But as this is a simple website and not an encrypted messenger app people install or something similar, that is a minor concern and we are happy with managing that risk ourselves.
  On the other hand, it further adds overhead with potentially no benefit and people who create similar projects (which there are lots of) have it even easier to create a (subjective) user-friendly and great solution. That is not something we want to support as this would further move us away from streamlining that database which leads to inefficiency.
  We also noted that each project is quite reserved when it comes to streamlining benefits and there are lots of different communities with different opinions and approaches. We streamline it our way and people may use it or even contribute if they feel like it.
  Also: https://www.trevorlasn.com/blog/open-source-is-where-dreams-go-to-die
  What would be the benefit open open source data?
  People could probably contribute quicker as it would open more approaches instead of submitting our form.
  Other than that it would be a nightmare to streamline as people would have lots of opinions about which categories to add, how to structure them, what to add, what not to add, how to categorize entries. We simplify this by giving people the option to suggest whatever category, company and product they want. Then we have a suggestions database, can cluster, validate, collect more info, evaluate and then add it. For us that's a great way of doing same but it's obviously not a perfect way - yet it works very well for us and does not seem to stop people from contributing everyday.
- Hi Thanks for the thorough answer.
  the rough imprint regulations are known. But by choosing a firm over a non-profit or a natural person (e.g. with Impressums-Service) will always raise the questions like: what you are planning for. A company is by definition profit-oriented. Also the personal risk with this project is not a good argument, any legal debate with a company would have you to change or delete an entry, before actual money is involved. On the other hand, if a company really wants to pull through and sues you, you are liable with company deposit (beschränkte Haftung). Anyhow, this isn't you being transparent, but ordinary legal stuff.
  Data Ownership Public facts (e.g., product/company names) can’t be copyrighted. Contributors’ data remains public knowledge. We only claim copyright on our own original content and creative work. We also double-check all hints submitted and then create the complete data set.
  I believe this isn't quite right, as you can protect databases with re-arranged data or at least the effort put into re-arranging the database (bei geringer Schöpfungshöhe): https://www.ra-plutte.de/rechtlicher-schutz-von-datenbanken-alles-wichtige-im-ueberblick/ I don't know (or actually care) if that is already enough to for example sell a database.
  Why Not Open Source? We respect open-source ideals but saw other projects struggle with clutter/inefficiency. We opted for a focused, curated approach to keep the database simple and user-friendly which seems to work exactly as intended based on your and other users’ feedback.
  Does that exclude going open-source in the future, e.g. when the curated database is mature enough? I mean, you could for example just release the data, without having people to edit it. But then again you invested so much time into vetting the user contributions, that this would be a hard choice to make.
  Why Not Non-Profit? First of all, we started the project overnight and therefore opted for an existing structure. German non-profits require heavy paperwork and oversight - overkill for a small, revenue-free project that we already invest a lot of time in but want to limit the financial spending. Also: No donations = no risk of mismanagement, which unfortunately happens left and right in the non-profit world.
  There are also good counterexamples. Also the project could be moved to a an already existing non-profit organization, so there would be no money involved in founding. (E.V.s haben wir in DE ja schließlich genug :-). The proper ones all work with transparency reports to justify the money flow. I imaging being a company makes donations more cumbersome with the balance sheets and tax office.
  This is a passion project: To support a cause we care about. To learn and experiment with new technology. To offer a streamlined database that follows our vision. Hope this helps and can be used as a reference in the future as these valid questions came up before and we answered them via other channels in the past.
  All the answers don't sound like a long-term solution to me. It's' more like a pet project which can be dropped at any moments notice. Or even worse, if you decide to turn your page into an affiliate marketing gig or an ad-hell to cover the server costs...
  Although nobody asked here yet: We went with .net as whatever we thought was a catchy name was not available in the .eu domain space. We obviously would have chosen .eu if it was available but people registered all those domain names to then not use same as it often happens on the Internet.
  Yea. Scalpers. I checked some domains (for a fediverse instance) by myself and found it quite agitating, what is already taken and should be sold for several 10K.
  
  Thanks for the long response which I quickly skimmed.
  To cut it short: We opted for this route, are very happy with the result, the feedback and the contributions. You may choose not to contribute or start your own project (as you already checked domains) but we are happy the way it is. The more overhead we generate (new structure, open source), the higher the possibility of failure and wasting money. Right now it's a slim and streamlined project that has little to no costs of running which means we can leave it running for decades to come (if there is still demand). The manual labour is still there but as it's a passion project, we want to invest that time but into the project and not into solving problems we don't face. In the end we are an efficient operation and not a German Behörde. :)
  
  Ah. Also https://www.goeuropean.org/ makes a good job presenting their team. Is buy-european.net a one-man show and if the Truck factor (a regular term for dev gets hit by a truck) happens, everything will go to the bin?
Upvote for visibility. Good catch!
Good questions! I'll put the link to this post in the stickied post about buy-european.net!
- I even think it's a good discussion that evolved here. The overall outcome is: use it as it is, for the time it is available.
  
  Great conclusion. And thanks for creating this thread, I tried finding the various discussions around this topic together with Blaze but most important part of it was on our Matrix channel and apparently you can't search (atleast on encrypted chats) messages ...
  And buy-european dev has also discussed some of these things on reddit in the past but I don't have a reddit account and couldn't find the post I was looking for sadly. But now we have it on lemmy!

38 comments