Every month, we send tens of thousands of dollars to dubious companies so they can take our data. In return, we are given opaque software to somehow manage our digital lives on devices we do not control. As a first initiative to put an end to this, _Bastler and Louis Fabu, the secretary of the tinkering to come, have founded THE DIGITAL TINKERING.
We run free software on self-managed servers, giving you an alternative to the so-called "cloud services" that Google, Apple and whoever else is trying to sell you. We share the costs equally among all users and collect a little extra money to develop the whole thing further and to fund other projects and initiatives within the framework of the coming tinkering. We keep only [minimal data](/en/privacy) from you and do not link your payment information to your user accounts.
At the moment there are several services available for an annual membership, such as an email account at @bstly.de with its own address space, 5GB of storage space and catch-all function, an account for our *Nextcloud* with 15GB of storage space, including practical functions such as synchronisable calendars, online office for collaborative text creation and much more. It also includes *Vaultwarden*, a password manager, *Matrix*, a messaging platform, and access to our digital clubhouse. More details about the current and planned services can be found [here](/en/services).
You can be part of the Digital Crafts: Association and pay your membership fee directly through our purchasing system. The more people who use the service, the more efficient it will be, so we may be able to offer more services, upgrades or features later on.
Association membership is for those who wish to actively support and help shape the Association. As a member, you can have your say by attending general meetings and voting.
Especially as we look to future projects outside of the digital space, your active participation is needed to bring more diversity and creativity to our projects. And since we like democratic processes, every member is also an enrichment to make the association processes more open. The Bastelei should be about the most creative, informal and good cooperation possible to enrich everyone involved.
So if you are not only interested in our digital services, but also want to pursue ideas and goals, you can simply click on your club membership at membership.bstly.com. All you have to do is wait for your application to be approved and then pay your first membership fee. You will then automatically receive an annual reminder to renew your membership at your registered email address. Detailed instructions can be found [here](/en/services/pretix#membership).
The registered association is the best legal form for our purposes, as we do not want to work in an economic way, but have idealistic goals. However, we have deliberately chosen not to be a charity in the sense of the law on associations. There are legal reasons for this, as we would see ourselves as a non-profit organisation. However, our experience of working in non-profit associations and current case law, which is not in line with our understanding of non-profit status, has led us to the conclusion that we will forgo the legal claim to non-profit status from the outset. The obvious disadvantage is the loss of tax benefits, e.g. the tax refund of membership fees, which is not available here. On the other hand, we can now more easily build up reserves, reward members for their work and make free decisions to achieve our goals more easily and quickly.
