Liberapay is a non-profit platform for recurrent donations. It is maintained by a non-profit organization of the same name, registered in

Querrien Querrien (; ) is a commune in the Finistère department of Brittany in northwestern France. Population Inhabitants of Querrien are called in French ''Querriennois''. Geography The village centre is located north of Quimperlé. Neighbouri ...

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

in 2015. Liberapay is primarily aimed at funding

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term encompassing free ...

artists An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating the work of art. The most common usage (in both everyday speech and academic discourse) refers to a practitioner in the visual arts o ...

and

content creators Content creation or content creative is the act of producing and sharing information or media content for specific audiences, particularly in digital contexts. According to '' Dictionary.com'', content refers to "something that is to be expresse ...

, though other uses are allowed.Other Crowdfunding / Fundraising Services
(archived), snowdrift.coop, retrieved 24 December 2022. The service doesn't charge a fee on donations. There is a

git repository Git () is a distributed version control system that tracks versions of files. It is often used to control source code by programmers who are developing software collaboratively. Design goals of Git include speed, data integrity, and support ...

for both its source code and the non-profit organization's information.

Service

The service does not charge a fee on donations, aside from that required by the underlying

payment processor A payment processor is a system that enables financial transactions, commonly employed by a merchant, to handle transactions with customers from various channels such as credit cards and debit cards or bank accounts. They are usually broken do ...

s. Instead, Liberapay is supported by donations handled by its own service. As of October 2020, Liberapay used payment processors

PayPal PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support E-commerce payment system, online money transfers; it serves as an electronic alter ...

and

Stripe Stripe, striped, or stripes may refer to: Decorations *Stripe (pattern), a line or band that differs in colour or tone from an adjacent surface *Racing stripe, a vehicle decoration * Service stripe, a decoration of the U.S. military Entertainment ...

. Liberapay has been compared to Patreon. 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 Patreon (, ) is a monetization platform operated by Patreon, Inc., that provides business tools for content creators to run a subscription service and sell digital products. It helps artists and other creators earn a recurring income by provid ...

collects

VAT A value-added tax (VAT or goods and services tax (GST), general consumption tax (GCT)) is a consumption tax that is levied on the value added at each stage of a product's production and distribution. VAT is similar to, and is often compared wi ...

on all payments made from inside the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

whereas Liberapay does not.

History

Started in 2015 in France, Liberapay began as an open-source

fork In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tines with which one can spear foods either to h ...

of the now-defunct US-based platform Gratipay.com (originally known as Gittip), which had undergone changes after facing legal issues. At the end of that year, the operators of the platform established a nonprofit organization under the 1901 law of associations. Initially, Liberapay's only supported currency was the

euro The euro (currency symbol, symbol: euro sign, €; ISO 4217, currency code: EUR) is the official currency of 20 of the Member state of the European Union, member states of the European Union. This group of states is officially known as the ...

. Support for the

US dollar The United States dollar (symbol: $; currency code: USD) is the official currency of the United States and several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introduced the U.S. dollar at par with the Spanish silver dollar, divided it int ...

was added in December 2017 (one month after Gratipay announced that it would shut down); support for 31 other currencies was added in 2018. 2018-07-17 liberapay-is-in-trouble by-David-Revoy

2018-07-17 liberapay-is-in-trouble by-David-Revoy

In 2018, Liberapay had to respond to Mangopay withdrawing its services as payment processor. Support for two other payment processors was added, but the way the platform works had to change. In the same year

Medium Medium may refer to: Aircraft *Medium bomber, a class of warplane * Tecma Medium, a French hang glider design Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''The Medium'' (1921 film), a German silent film * ''The Medium'' (1951 film), a film vers ...

briefly suspended the organisation's blog account, claiming they were publishing articles about

cryptocurrencies A cryptocurrency (colloquially crypto) is a digital currency designed to work through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. Individual coin ownership records ...

. In January 2021, Liberapay announced donations reached €8000 per week, a 150% year over year increase, with 5977 patrons and 912 creators. In 2022, Liberapay started using

machine translation Machine translation is use of computational techniques to translate text or speech from one language to another, including the contextual, idiomatic and pragmatic nuances of both languages. Early approaches were mostly rule-based or statisti ...

services to automatically complete the translations of its website.

Reception

2017-07-13 liberapay-lantern by-David-Revoy

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.

F-Droid F-Droid is a free and open source app store and software repository for Android (operating system), Android, serving a similar function to the Google Play store. The main repository, hosted by the project, contains only free software, free and o ...

announced support for Liberapay and integration of support for apps. 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''.

References

External links

*
Liberapay Code Repository
on

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

{{Crowdfunding platforms Financial services companies established in 2016 Crowdfunding platforms of France Creative Commons-licensed websites