NewPipe e.V.

Today we had our mid-year plenum preceded by a board meeting. The board discussed on the performance of constractors, and assigned tasks for buying the NewPipe logo and hiring two new contractors. Afterwards, the plenum reviewed NewPipe e.V.'s presence at FOSDEM and FrOSCon, reiterated the 2026 budget plan, came up with ideas on contractor management, and discussed the withdrawal from a NLNet grant application. Finally, the board informed the plenum on ongoing efforts for trademark and copyright enforcement.

The protocols from the two meetings are included below, one after the other. The revised and approved budget plan is available here.

Protocol notes for 8th board meeting of NewPipe e.V.

People from the board present: Fynn, Poolitzer, Stypox

Additional participants: TheAssassin

Agenda items:

1. Appointment of the protocol writer
2. Determining the quorum
3. Adoption of the agenda
4. Adoption of the protocol of 21.12.2025
5. Discuss contractor performance (private)
6. Assign outstanding tasks

The meeting is started at 19:06 German time, 24.08.2026, 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 present board members acknowledge that a timely invite happened and that the meeting has quorum according to §8.10 of the statute. The agenda was attached as part of the invitation.

Item 3: Adoption of the agenda

The agenda is adopted unchanged unanimously by the board.

Item 4: Adoption of the protocol of 21.12.2025

The protocol of the previous board meeting of 21.12.2025 is adopted unchanged.

Item 5: Discuss contractor performance (private)

TheAssassin leaves the meeting while the board privately discusses the performance of contractors.

The board concludes with an overall positive impression of our contractors.

In order to keep a clear direction for the project, the board will suggest TeamNewPipe to organize monthly or bi-monthly online meetings.

Item 6: Assign outstanding tasks

TheAssassin rejoins the meeting.

Logo

Poolitzer talked about the logo licensing issues with TheAssassin at FrOSCon, and got new information on how to work with GPL-licensed logos. For example, the OBS logo is both trademarked and licensed under GPLv3. Therefore he wrote another email to ponypower.

Poolitzer proposes registering the logo as a trademark, but Stypox argues that it's probably too generic to be accepted, though a lawyer may give a different opinion. TheAssassin mentions the possibility of registering logo+text, although it's probably not worth it. Fynn also explains that even if we had registered the logo as a mark, it would be hard to enforce it against copycats who use a modified version.

Poolitzer suggests thinking about this again after obtaining the rights over the logo.

Hiring new contractor

Poolitzer and Stypox say that they won't have time until October to evaluate candidates and conduct interviews.

Fynn and Pooliter agree to jointly prepare an announcement to put on the website. The application window is agreed to remain open for 2 weeks, since 1 month would be too long.

Stypox argues that before we hire a UI/UX contractor, we need someone from TeamNewPipe who has a specific UI/UX need and could work together with them. Another option is to specify in the job description that we need someone who is ready to work together with the team, rather than working on specific screen designs.

Stypox suggests to hire a project manager, who could help with the current lack of team management, and suggests that maybe one of the contractors we have already could play that role. Poolitzer argues that since we are an open source project, it's expected that we don't have a big hierarchical structure, and that to improve on the team management side we'd rather need a fulltime maintainer.

Protocol note: this point is discussed again during the assembly directly following this board meeting.

Fixing Admidio configuration

Fynn and TheAssassin discuss over how to prevent users from adding data about them in Admidio, that we did not specify in our privacy policy. Also other Admidio-related topics are discussed.

Closing

After acknowledging that all items on the agenda have been handled, Fynn closes the meeting at 20:00 German time, 24.08.2026.

Protocol notes for 9th plenum meeting of NewPipe e.V.

People present: Stypox, Fynn, Poolitzer, TheAssassin, TobiGr, Kai-Uwe

Agenda items:

1. Appointment of the protocol writer
2. Acknowledge quorum
3. Acknowledge topics
4. Acknowledge last protocol
5. FOSDEM attendance
6. FrOSCon attendance
7. Update on our tax situation and budget retrospective
8. Hiring additional contractors
9. Reiterate budget plan
10. Stypox's NLNet grant application
11. Report on ongoing trade mark enforcement activities
12. Copyright enforcement for NewPipeExtractor
13. Miscellaneous

The meeting is started at 20:05 German time, 24.08.2026, 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.

Item 3: Adoption of the agenda

Fynn suggests to amend the proposed agenda with a retrospective on the two conferences we attended (FOSDEM and FrOSCon).

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

Item 4: Adoption of the protocol of 09.02.2026

The protocol of the previous plenum meeting of 09.02.2026 is adopted unchanged unanimously.

Item 5: FOSDEM attendance

Stypox explains how it went at FOSDEM 2026. The e.V. funded the attendance of Stypox, Tobi and Schabi to the conference, where they also met up with Aayush. Discussions were held on how to manage the NewPipe refactor (for example, merging the refactor branch to dev as soon as possible), and how to organize contributions in general.

Stypox held a talk with flypig in the mobile devroom, where NewPipe, NewPipeExtractor and Sailpipe were presented. Sailpipe is flypig's port of NewPipe for SailfishOS.

Many more interesting discussions were held with members of the open source community, for example about UnifiedPush.

Tobi also remembers a discussion with Schabi about a standalone app based on NewPlayer.

Item 6: FrOSCon attendance

Poolitzer explains how it went at FrOSCon 2026, held 2 weeks prior. The e.V. funded the attendance of Poolitzer, TheAssassin and Schabi.

This year the e.V. had a big devroom, which was a bit away from the center of the conference, so difficult to find us. Also, devrooms are supposed to host a lot of talks, which is not something we did. But having a big stand like last year would have been complicated as well with a staff of only 3 people. TheAssassin suggests that some marketing or a separate small stand would have been needed to make the location easier to spot.

Given the location of the room, the conference this year was relaxed, and there were opportunities to do long and interesting discussions. TheAssassin even talked with a few organizers.

For next year, Poolitzer suggests to hold a small stand if there are again not many attendants, and otherwise to organize a devroom where any developer can present their app. This would contribute significantly to the conference, as TheAssassin explains, since mobile apps are currently underrepresented there. Another possibility to fill the devrom would be to organize a TeamNewPipe meetup.

Regarding equipment, TheAssassin explains that a fan was brought (which has been added to the permanent conference inventory), but that otherwise the equipment was good. A beachflag would be a cool addition for next conferences. Since the card reader was not brought to the conference and there was no donation box, TheAssassin designed a donation box for future conferences.

Poolitzer explains that the social event was a nice atmosphere, although there were some issues with food.

In general, Fynn supports Poolitzer's and TheAssassin's idea of organizing more things for next year, but advises caution not to overstrain one's own capacity.

Item 7: Update on our tax situation and budget retrospective

Tax situation

Fynn did a lot of research on taxes and why we don't have to pay them despite not being recognized as beneficial to the public. It was difficult to do research because almost all literature is only concerned with associations officially recognized as beneficial to the public. Initial findings were that member fees are not taxable, and money spent on statute goals is not deductible (which initially didn't make much sense). But the reality is that, in general, donations are not taxable under corporate tax: there are 7 kinds of income in Germany, which don't include donations, so donations are not taxed.

This freed up quite some more money in the budget.

We have also explained this situation to the tax office to receive a Nichtveranlagungsbescheinigung for use with our bank. Protocol note: thus we will not pay taxes on capital earnings, if any occur in the future.

Budget

Fynn explains how the 2026 budget plan has played out so far.

The donation income is above our (conservative, as usual) estimate.

The banking fees were higher due to the charges incurred in paying foreign contractors. PayPal fees are expected to go over expected value because we got more money than expected from that source.

FrOSCon budget reached ~1500€, higher than last year, because of having single rooms in the hotel, buying a fan, and making a larger donation to FrOSCon.

Digital infrastructure contractor money is not going to be used further in 2026, as far as current plans go.

A lot of money was saved on the notary, because Ortsgericht in the state of Hesse can perform notarization for only 7.5 EUR.

We finally made use of the "contributor hardware budget" to buy a 75€ second-hand phone to use for development and at conferences.

Item 8: Hiring additional contractors

The money allocated for development contracts is 45000€, which according to current forecasts is not going to be depleted, therefore Fynn and Stypox suggest we hire a new contractor. Moreover, Fynn argues that the target could be increased to 65000€, because we have more money on our bank account we can use (e.g. some that was previously being held for taxes). This could fund up to 500-600 more hours of work until the end of the year, as was discussed during the board meeting.

Fynn explains that the idea of having a UI/UX contractor has been floating around for a while, but no specific requests were heard from TeamNewPipe yet. Tobi says that hiring someone if we don't have capacity to collaborate with them would not be a good idea.

Kai-Uwe brings his perspective on the topic: developers are usually code-centric, while UI/UX designers look at what the customers need. We would need someone who creates alignment between the two teams. Tobi explains that unfortunately there is no capacity in the team for that at the moment.

Kai-Uwe then suggests hiring a UI/UX designer to do a UI audit in the order of magnitude of 3k–5k€, in order to get a professional's idea on how to proceed further. It would help finding the biggest annoyances and things which would provide the most value for the user, so that the team could focus on them.

Stypox explains that the biggest issue is having the capacity within the team to actually act upon the UI/UX-related work items. Kai-Uwe suggest employing the following strategy: identify problems, prioritize problems, and then work on them.

Stypox reports that during the board meeting it was discussed to hold a TeamNewPipe meeting once every two months. Tobi says that they would be able to join at that frequency without issues, and that they could happen even more often.

During the board meeting, the board also wondered whether to hire an expert in players for a limited time, specifically to conclude work on NewPlayer. This would also play nicely with the fact that we can overspend our income now due to the saved-up money, but that we don't know if we can keep the same pace next year.

Item 9: Reiterate budget plan

Fynn explains that the prior FrOSCon budget of 1200€ will be overspent, and thus proposes increasing it to 1500€. The reasons are higher hotel expenses and some new permanent inventory. (The FrOSCon budget cannot be closed yet because there are still pending expenses.)

The same budget is allocated for FOSDEM 2027.

Fynn proposes keeping the budget for travel to CCC to up to 125€ per person, and for a maximum of 500€, although nobody in the meeting shows interest in making use of this budget.

TheAssassin proposes doing a talk at SFSCon, but unfortunately this year it is already too late to propose a talk there.

Fynn emphasizes the board's intention to continue applying the budget plan until a new one is approved, so we don't have to rush a new plan at the beginning of 2027. The assembly agrees.

TheAssassin proposes doing a small donation (20-30€) to Admidio, to show our support. Stypox and Fynn are in favour. Fynn proposing amending the budget plan for a donation of up to 50€.

The chairman asks the assembly to vote on this formulation: "Do you approve of the updated budget plan?". The assembly unanimously votes "yes".

The updated budget plan is available here.

Item 10: Stypox's NLNet grant application

Stypox explains that he applied for the NLNet's "NGI Zero Commons Fund" grant, for 30000€ fulltime for 6 months, for developing NewPipe add-ons and making NewPipe multiplatform. A first response from NLNet's side is expected to arrive in mid-September.

In the meantime Stypox's life plans changed, and so he is not going to have time for the work required by the grant anymore.

Stypox therefore asks whether any other person in the meeting wants to pick up the grant (although it's unclear whether that would be possible from the NLNet's side).

Nobody in the assembly shows interest, but the plenum still agrees to let the application continue until the first response is received, since that is what NLNet's policy suggests doing anyway. The first response from NLNet is expected to arrive by mid-september.

Item 11: Report on ongoing trade mark enforcement activities

Fynn explains his efforts on trademark enforcement:

• trade mark enforcement action is taken multiple times per month
• trade mark reports on Google Play usually lead to complete removal of the infringing application
• our rights in case of infringement are:
  • infringing use is stopped
  • compensation for damages (can consist of necessary legal fees, and the profits the infringing party has incurred based on their infringing use)
  • receive signed declaration to desist on pain of incurring a penalty (strafbewehrte Unterlassungserklärung)
• conclusion: recurring problem of apps titled “NewPipe” relatively effectively combated by mark registration and enforcement

To save time, TheAssassin proposes writing some automation scripts, and/or to look for volunteers.

Fynn is skeptical about this idea because of the many steps needed to fill forms and respond to inquiries adequately. TheAssassin therefore suggests Fynn to just let him know if there is any way to help.

Item 12: Copyright enforcement for NewPipeExtractor

NewPipeExtractor's GPLv3 license is often violated because closed source apps that use NewPipeExtractor are distributed on online stores.

The process for copyright enforcement on Google Play is unfortunately a lot of back and forth with irrelevant inquiries.

Thanks to Fynn's efforts, which began a few weeks ago, there was one successful takedown from Play Store.

Item 13: Miscellaneous

After acknowledging that nobody has any miscellaneous topic, Fynn closes the meeting at 22:04 German time, 24.08.2026.