Liberapay

Liberapay is a platform for recurrent donations.[2][3] It is maintained by a non-profit organization of the same name, registered in France in 2015. The platform is primarily aimed at funding free and open-source software, art and knowledge, but other uses are allowed.[4]

Liberapay
Type of site
Crowdfunding platform
Available in30+ languages[1]
URLliberapay.com
LaunchedFebruary 3, 2016 (2016-02-03)
Written inPython

Service

The service does not charge a fee on donations aside from that required by the underlying payment processors, instead financing its own activity through donations handled by the service itself in the same way as donations to third-parties are handled.[3][5] As of October 2020, Liberapay uses payment processors PayPal and Stripe.[6][7]

Liberapay has been compared to Patreon.[8] Unlike other crowdfunding platforms, Liberapay does not allow creators to reward their patrons. This difference in the nature of the transactions has tax implications. For example, Patreon collects VAT on all payments made from inside the European Union[9] whereas Liberapay does not.[10]

History

Started in 2015 in France, Liberapay began as a fork of the now-defunct US-based platform Gratipay.com (originally known as Gittip), which had undergone changes after facing legal issues.[11] At the end of that year, the operators of the platform established a nonprofit organization under the 1901 law of associations.[12]

Initially, Liberapay's only supported currency was the euro. Support for the US dollar was added in December 2017 (one month after Gratipay announced that it would shut down);[13] support for 31 other currencies was added in 2018.[14]

In 2018, Liberapay had to respond to Mangopay withdrawing its services as payment processor.[15][16] Support for two other payment processors was added, but the way the platform works had to change.[17] In the same year Medium briefly suspended the organisation's blog account, claiming they were publishing articles about cryptocurrencies.[18]

In January 2021, Liberapay announced donations reached €8000 per week, a 150% year over year increase, with 5977 patrons and 912 creators.[19][20]

In 2022, Liberapay started using machine translation services to automatically complete the translations of its website.[21]

Reception

In 2018, Jason van Gumster writing for RedHat's Opensource said distinguishing factors of Liberapay were target audience, Open Source, lack of fees on payments, and non-profit status.[22] F-Droid announced support for Liberapay and integration of support for apps.[23]

Liberapay was one of six funding platforms recommended by Elaine A. Clark in her 2020 book Voice-Overs for Podcasting: How to Develop a Career and Make a Profit.[24]

References
  1. Liberapay's translations on Weblate. Retrieved 2022-10-15.
  2. "Après un an d'activité, Liberapay veut être l'alternative libre pour les dons récurrents" [A year after its launch, Liberapay wants to be the open source alternative for recurrent donations] (in French). 2017-04-13. Archived from the original on 2017-09-16.
  3. "Introduction - Liberapay". Archived from the original on 2017-08-21.
  4. "Other Crowdfunding / Fundraising Services" (archived), snowdrift.coop, retrieved 24 December 2022.
  5. "Patreon's loss is Liberapay's gain". Linux Format. No. 233. Feb 2018. p. 7. ProQuest 2051733417.
  6. "Payment Processors - Liberapay". en.liberapay.com. Retrieved 2020-10-03.
  7. "Liberapay's back". Linux Format. No. 242. Oct 2018. p. 8. ProQuest 2114610316.
  8. Irzik, Emrah (2019-06-01). "Forms of Remuneration for Free Software Production: A Reducible Complexity". Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai Sociologia. 64 (1): 109–126. doi:10.2478/subbs-2019-0005. ISSN 2066-0464. S2CID 201061695. ProQuest 2272725732.
  9. "How does VAT work on Patreon?". 2018-03-25.
  10. Tweet from Liberapay about VAT, 2018-03-13.
  11. "Gratipay, Liberapay - Open source tipping apps struggle". P2P Foundation. 2016-03-11. Retrieved 2017-08-25.
  12. "Annonce JOAFE n°157 de la parution n°20160002 du 9 janvier 2016" [OJACF announcement No.157 of publication No. 20160002 of January 9, 2016]. Official Journal of Associations & Corporate Foundations (in French). Retrieved 2023-02-19.
  13. "Liberapay now supports US dollars". 2017-12-07. Archived from the original on 2018-02-09.
  14. "The third year of Liberapay". 2019-02-04.
  15. "Are we in the middle of an open source funding crisis?". Linux Format. No. 241 (sampler). 2018-08-21. p. 6. Retrieved 2023-02-18 – via Issuu.
  16. "Liberapay is in trouble". 2018-07-12.
  17. "Liberapay status update". 2018-10-12.
  18. Sanders, James (March 26, 2018). "Why passage of SESTA/FOSTA is leading some cloud providers to terminate users". TechRepublic. Retrieved 2020-10-03.
  19. "https://twitter.com/liberapay/status/1346839552816783360". Twitter. Retrieved 2023-07-27. {{cite web}}: External link in |title= (help)
  20. Liberapay (January 6, 2021). "FDNitter". Nitter. Retrieved February 18, 2023.
  21. Liberapay on Twitter: “Thanks to machine translations, Liberapay is now fully available in 34 languages”, 2022-09-16.
  22. "Liberapay: How creators of open content get funded | Opensource.com". opensource.com. Retrieved 2023-02-15.
  23. "Liberapay, a fully free Donation Platform | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository". f-droid.org. Retrieved 2023-02-15.
  24. Clark, Elaine A. (2020-11-17). Voice-Overs for Podcasting: How to Develop a Career and Make a Profit. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-62153-747-2.
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