That is probably Scheinselbständigkeit and illegal in Germany.
Guess that would just depend on the development model you care about - do you want employees or are you okay with a more incremental, diffuse approach? I think i remember nostr:npub1utx00neqgqln72j22kej3ux7803c2k986henvvha4thuwfkper4s7r50e8 mentioning he paid based off of pull requests
Discussion
Granted, also pretty sure payments were in btc and non-kyc, so there was less formality and bureaucracy needed 🤫
Working on the black market sucks, tho. Know a lot of people trapped in that sort of situation.
Can confirm paid by pull request. Developers like this arrangement too. It's not a black market or illegal to hire contractors to build stuff for you. Not everyone wants to be tired down to a single employer.
The point being that you might be their only employer, in which case German law forbids it because they're tied down, but not covered by employee protections.
It would be clear if we had a larger market for paid-by-PR and they were pulling PRs from different projects. Then it's contracting. Perhaps we have that and they're pulling PRs from many different employers.