Blog posts

7th plenum

2026-01-21

Today we had our usual beginning-of-year plenum: the board went over the yearly and monetary reports, the cash auditor went over their audit, the assembly elected a new board and cash auditor, and the participants devised a budget plan for 2026. The planned discharge of the 2025 board did not happen in this meeting due to the cash auditor still not having finished the audit. A few more points related to the future direction of the e.V. were discussed at the end of the meeting.

The full protocol is included below. The documents discussed are accessible here:


Protocol notes for 7th plenum meeting of NewPipe e.V.

Members present: Stypox, Fynn, Poolitzer, TheAssassin, Kai-Uwe

Members that joined later: Schabi

Non-members without voting rights who also joined: Absurdlylongusername, SiddheshNaik, Aayush, lm41

Agenda items:

  1. Appointment of the protocol writer
  2. Determining the quorum
  3. Adoption of the agenda
  4. Adoption of the protocol of 06.09.2025
  5. Yearly report
  6. Monetary report
  7. Cash audit report
  8. Discharge of the board
  9. Election of the board + cash auditor
  10. Budget plan for 2026
  11. Reaching out to NewPipe fork developers
  12. Asking content creators how NewPipe could be better for them
  13. Showing a call for donation popup in NewPipe
  14. Adding availability requirements for next sysadmin contracts
  15. Miscellaneous

The meeting is started at 18:05 German time, 21.01.2026, by the chairman of the meeting, Fynn.

Item 1: Appointment of the protocol writer

Stypox agrees to take the protocol notes.

Item 2: Determining the quorum

The people present acknowledge that a timely invite happened and that the meeting has quorum according to §7.6 of the statute. The agenda was attached as part of the invitation, along with the 2025 balance sheet, the 2025 income statement and the 2025 budget report.

Item 3: Adoption of the agenda

Fynn decides to hold a public vote to accept the agenda. The agenda is adopted unchanged unanimously.

Item 4: Adoption of the protocol of 06.09.2025

The protocol of the previous plenum meeting of 06.09.2025 is adopted unchanged with 1 abstention.

Item 5: Yearly report

Stypox presents the yearly report for 2025.

Item 6: Monetary report

Income statement

Fynn goes through the income statement, mentioning that the one in the invitation had some inconsistencies that were now corrected. The updated document is available here.

The amount of donations was still staggeringly high this year too (~41000€); Fynn additionally thanks the members for the membership fees.

Most banking fees were for PayPal, unfortunately, though donors can see how many fees they would pay when paying with PayPal though LiberaPay.

We spent ~3000€ for conferences, including ~800€ for equipment, and 400€ for a donation to FrOSCon. The team NewPipe meetup was the cheapest, costing just ~400€ for a 4-day meetup of 5 people.

We have not paid any corporate taxes yet because the tax office says we don't owe them.

We spent ~850€ for the digital infrastructure, including ~250€ for a development contract which just began.

The donations we made do not include FrOSCon as that's embedded in the sum for conferences (400€). The donation to LuanRT (150€) is embedded in the NewPipe section.

We additionally spent ~700€ on merchandise, including shipping for sending merch to TeamNewPipe members as a beginning-of-year gift.

The largest part of the budget, ~10000€, was spent on NewPipe development contracts. This includes the 150€ donation made to LuanRT.

TheAssassin says that in the Rechnungsabgrenzung there is a mechanism for accounting for invoices of a year prior although the money was transferred in the year after (e.g. invoiced in 2024 but paid in 2025). Fynn looks up the date of the invoices for merch at the beginning of 2025: 4 invoices were sent in January and 2 in December (140€), but they were all paid in January. TheAssassin mention that it's not so relevant for a small sum, but it would need to be handled better in case of paying a contractor.

lm41 asks for costs related to the FrOSCon conference, and Fynn and TheAssassin explains that out of the ~1000€, 400€ were for a donation we made, e.g. to thank them for the free food for organizers.

Balance sheet

Schabi joins the meeting at this point in time.

Fynn moves on to explain the balance sheet. Absurdlylongusername asks about the meaning of "GLS", and is explained that it's the German bank we have our account at.

Fynn explains that PayPal still has money at the end of the month and pays it out right afterwards, and that's why there is money in that account, but that there is no intention to keep the money there.

Since our assets contain 4 cents of donations from FrOSCon, Schabi suggests not accepting such small donations in the future, as they cause more accounting work for nothing.

At the beginning of 2025 we had ~22000€ on the bank account, and at the beginning of 2026 we have ~46000€.

Item 7: Cash audit report

Schabi, the cash auditor, explains that he audited all payments one by one. TheAssassin explains that it's indeed a good idea to look at every single payment, but that looking at a sample of payments would be fine too.

Schabi explains that the balance sheet for 2025 contains some payments for invoices happening in 2024. Refer to the discussion above for the reason about this.

While checking the bookkeeping, Schabi found some missing invoices but that was quickly corrected by the board. Poolitzer explains that now thanks to Zammad, the board should not miss any invoice anymore.

Schabi explains that he has not finished checking the bookkeeping, and can therefore not reasonably suggest to discharge the board. The assembly agrees to organize a new plenum meeting as soon as possible to let Schabi complete the cash audit and then discharge the 2025 board. TheAssassin explains that this would be a valid course of action.

Item 8: Discharge of the board

This item is skipped because the cash audit report was not ready. It will be done in the next plenum meeting as soon as possible.

Item 9: Election of the board + cash auditor

The votes in this section were all held without TheAssassin, because he had to leave for some time.

Fynn asks if there are any problems in holding the board elections before discharging the 2025 board. Nobody raises any complaint.

Fynn designates Poolitzer as election leader.

The statute mandates that the board size needs to be agreed before voting on the members, and that the board size can be from 2 to 4 people.

The assembly is asked to propose candidates for the new board. Only the members of the board of 2025, Stypox, Poolitzer and Fynn, say they would be willing to run for the board one more year.

The assembly unanimously votes for a board size of 3.

Stypox, Poolitzer and Fynn accept to be candidates for being part of the board.

The assembly unanimously votes in favour of Stypox being part of the board.

The assembly unanimously votes in favour of Fynn being part of the board.

The assembly unanimously votes in favour of Poolitzer being part of the board.

Stypox, Poolitzer and Fynn accept the role.

Fynn proposes Tobi for being the cash auditor. Although he is not present in the call, he proposed himself in the Matrix chat and said that, in case he would be elected, he would accept the role.

The assembly unanimously votes in favour of Tobi being the cash auditor.

Schabi mentions he would seek help from Tobi to complete the cash audit report for 2025.

Item 10: Budget plan for 2026

Fynn explains that he has prepared the opening balances for 2026 in GnuCash, and the budget plan will be compiled there.

Fynn projects that we will still be getting 40000€ of donations during 2025, and Stypox supports his idea by showing the following graph. Stypox explains that the increase in bank transfer donations at the beginning of 2025 was because we added our IBAN to the websites's donation pages. Futhermore, the spike of donations in July 2024 was due to the NewPipe app being broken for a week or so, and people donated to help out.

Expected expenses

Fynn estimates that in 2026 the GLS fees (~300€), PayPal fees (~600€) and legal fees (~320€) are probably going to remain roughly the same.

Fynn explains that we have to keep accounting for taxes in the past years since we have not paid any yet (because the tax office said so), but in theory we would need to pay them. This includes an advance payment for the year of 2026. This amounts to ~8000€.

TheAssassin comes back at this point in time.

Current NewPipe development contracts amount to ~54000€, however given how active the contractors actually are, the money that is expected to be spent on them is roughly half of that. Stypox suggests not blocking all of the budget plan because of this, and thus suggests to start with only ~27000€ already budgeted, and independently decide how much more to allocate. TheAssassin suggests the board to keep an eye on the donation income, because if it changes drastically we would quickly run out of money.

Digital infrastructure

Spending on digital infrastructure are forecasted to be ~3500€, based on already established development contracts for system administration and recurring hosting costs.

TheAssassin explains that if we got a dedicated server, for 50-60€/month, we would have much more flexibility in hosting. TheAssassin thinks that the already forecasted budget of 1200€ for hosting providers should still be enough, but to sustain the hosting plans we have (e.g. moving TeamNewPipe stuff hosted on TheAssassin's servers to the e.V.'s servers), he suggests adding 300€ to have some margin. Some cost is also caused by double infrastructure to let the sysadmin contractor work. Nobody has objections against budgeting 1500€ for hosting costs. Fynn and TheAssassin also mention that the figure could anyway be changed in the mid-year budget revision.

Upon inquiry by Fynn, TheAssassin says that the current money allocated for development contracts (~2300€) should be enough.

Fynn asks the assembly whether we should increase the pay rate of 32€/h to satisfy more applicants. TheAssassin mentions that in the future we could possibly start from as high as 40€/h and negotiate down (so in the range 32€/h to 40€/h).

Merchandise

Stypox and Fynn agree that we just need to buy flyers and coasters for the year of 2026, so 200€ should be enough. TheAssassin suggests raising this to 300€ in case we need to ship merch to contributors, and the assembly agrees.

Schabi suggests we could sell T-Shirts at conferences, but Fynn explains that this would increase a lot our organizational efforts for very little additional income. TheAssassin explains we could setup an online shop, but this is in any case irrelevant to the budget planning.

Contributor hardware

Fynn questions whether we should renew the "contributor hardware" program, considering that no contributor ever applied. Poolitzer suggests keeping this funded because the idea is theoretically very nice.

Stypox and Schabi explain that it would be good to possibly buy some test devices, especially to support the NewPipe Compose Multiplatform efforts, but that this should be discussed in a future budget planning.

Schabi and TheAssassin also voice their support towards buying testing devices. They could be used for demoing at conferences too.

The assembly agrees to budget 1000€ for this, although there is a high chance that no money will be spent.

UX / UI consulting for NewPipe app

Making designs for the NewPipe app would be useful, but only if there are developers that can implement the changes suggested by the designer. Fynn claims that in 2026 there could such implementation bandwith, but it should be up to TeamNewPipe to ask for money to pay a designer and the team (represented by Stypox in the call) does not believe there is such need right now. Stypox therefore suggests moving this budget entry to be part of the NewPipe development contracts budget, since then the contracts can be made flexibly based on TeamNewPipe's needs.

Donations

Besides the 900€ we already donate yearly to LiberaPay (300€) and Weblate (600€), we could allocate some budget for Codeberg too, e.g. to get help from them to migrate, or as a donation. Schabi and Poolitzer suggest postponing this to when the migration actually takes place, because right now it would be outside of the e.V.'s goals. So no additional money is allocated for donating to Codeberg.

Conferences

Fynn suggests talking about conferences in the later part of the year in the mid-year budget plan revision. And for FOSDEM 2026 we have already allocated 900€.

TheAssassin explains that going to FrOSCon last year was a good experience and we met a lot of people, although they were not all Android FOSS devs. Staying at the booth was exhausting though, so this year we could try to join a smaller shared booth instead.

Since only two of the people present in the meeting would be interested in going to FrOSCon, Stypox suggests asking other TeamNewPipe and e.V. members (as always), and if enough people want to participate they can organize a booth and ask the e.V. to give them equipment for the booth. So the assembly agrees to allocate 1200€ for FrOSCon.

Regarding self-organized TeamNewPipe sessions, Fynn and Stypox suggest that it should be TeamNewPipe asking for money to be allocated and then organizing the event, instead of the e.V. doing so. This is relevant because for the 2025 meetup the e.V. forecasted that many more TNP people would sign up than what actually happened, and so the organization was overdone. Therefore Stypox suggests not allocating any money on this point, and reconsider this budget entry in case TeamNewPipe asks to allocate money for a meetup.

Tax consultancy

Fynn argues that we might need to pay money for tax consultancy, but that we will likely not need it, and so no money should be allocated for it.

NewPipe development contracts

If we want to keep ~25000€ in the bank account in the end, and want to spend the remaining available budget money on NewPipe development contracts, the amount to allocate for those contracts should be 45000€. Stypox explains that this would allow increasing the amount of contractor hours per month from ~70 to ~110-120.

Misc

Stypox argues that we should not allocate anything for countering Google's developer verification program, since we don't know any organization we could support yet.

Approval

The chairman asks the assembly to vote on this formulation: "Do you approve of the budget plan as discussed during this assembly and as shown?". The assembly unanimously votes "yes".

The approved 2026 budget plan is available here.

Item 11: Reaching out to NewPipe fork developers

Schabi explains that items 11, 12, 13 on the agenda would be strategic for the NewPipe project and the NewPipe association, although they are not 100% association related. Schabi therefore asks whether they should even be discussed in this occasion. Fynn raises doubts about item 12, but the item still ends up being discussed in the end.

Schabi explains that it would be in the goals of the association to contact NewPipe fork developers to let them know that the e.V. exists, and establish a friendly channel with them.

Stypox supports Schabi's proposal, explaining that since the e.V.'s goals are to promote free access to libre media, it would make sense to be in contact with projects other than NewPipe. For example, in a hypothetical scenario where we decide to add support for service plugins in NewPipe, it would even possibly make sense for the e.V. to pay a developer of a fork to help out, since some NewPipe forks were born to support more services in the first place.

Nobody has anything against contacting NewPipe fork developers, under the condition that this does not put more burdens on the board.

Item 12: Asking content creators how NewPipe could be better for them

Schabi explains that, given the e.V.'s general goals about libre media access, it would make sense to reach out to content creators and hear their opinion on tools like NewPipe. Stypox argues that, if we want to promote a transition away from proprietary platforms with skewed incentives, and toward more open and respectful platforms, we should listen to the needs of the users as well as those of content creators.

TheAssassin complains that the discussion is too hypothetical, and Schabi explains that while NewPipe is for the users, it is big enough to have a dent in content creators' income.

As a start, TheAssassin suggests the possibility of making a blogpost together with some content creators. The relationship between content creators and a tool like NewPipe would also be a nice topic for a NewPipe-themed conference or for an online seminar.

Stypox and Schabi explain that the main point would be to reach out to content creators to better understand their needs. The assembly does not object to the e.V. taking this position, again under the condition that this does not put more burdens on the board.

Item 13: Showing a call for donation popup in NewPipe

Schabi explains that he and Stypox organized a public meetup during 39C3 on the NewPipe topic. There an open source KDE developer explained that ever since they added a donation popup (once a year, at the end of the year), their donation income increased tenfold.

But as Schabi and Fynn explain, it's been hard for the e.V. to spend all donation money so far already, so before trying to increase donations significantly we should figure out a way to handle more tasks.

TheAssassin brings up the idea of offloading some of the tasks that the board is currently handling (e.g. accounting or contracting, where not a lot of personal data is involved), to dedicated professional offices or to a contractor we hire ourselves. Making volunteers do all of the work won't let us scale, so for example the setting up of international contracts could be handled by an international lawyer next time. TheAssassin therefore concludes that increasing the income of money could be done, but together with outsourcing more tasks.

Schabi suggests trying this yearly popup for one year and seeing what happens. If the income grows by much, Stypox and TheAssassin strongly suggest hiring a secretary or another figure to handle the increased load.

Schabi also argues that it would be good to have more professional developers working on NewPipe and ensuring a steady influx of maintenance, and this could be helped by having additional money. So strategically it would make sense to increase money income but it's important to not burden the board too much, as they are all volunteers.

Fynn is worried how much the organization of the e.V. is intertwined with the personal plans of its members. Fynn suggests posting a message in the NewPipe chat to try to get new members who could help.

Since there is no clear consensus and the assembly has to make up their mind yet, discussions on this topic are deemed important but postponed to a later date.

Item 14: Adding availability requirements for next sysadmin contracts

Schabi suggests not discussing this item at this point, and the assembly agrees.

Item 15: Miscellaneous

Schabi asks how we should move forward with regards to the unfinished cash audit. Poolitzer suggests scheduling another plenum meeting as soon as possible, by making a poll for all of the days in a week in 3 weeks.

After acknowledging that nobody has any other miscellaneous topic, Fynn closes the meeting at 21:30 German time, 21.01.2026.