This is a really important time to push free and open source alternatives to #Patreon! I've considered using @Liberapay, but was afraid I had to use Patreon to get the network effect.
Please tell people about #Liberapay, post about it on Reddit (r/patreon), vote it up on Alternativeto, etc https://alternativeto.net/software/liberapay/
Please boost! This kind of opportunity to topple a near monopoly with FLOSS does not come often!
Are there other FLOSS #crowdfunding platforms?
@forteller @Liberapay One thing missing from Liberapay (if I've understood right) is the option to give perks.
For example, Finnish authorities are very clear in that accepting donations without giving anything in exchange (i.e. pay to get a perk) is forbidden without a donations collecting permit issued by the police. Thus as it is now, using Liberapay in Finland is in the grey area and not a viable solution for someone looking for *stable* income.
There may be other shitty countries, too.
@forteller @Liberapay Finnish creative people must always be very careful with how they craft their Patreon/Kickstarter/any crowdfunding texts. If done wrong, the police and tax authority are knocking on the door.
Even Wikimedia Suomi ry, a society promoting Wikipedia in Finland, has been targeted by police because of international Wikipedia's donation pleas — and they weren't even related to the donations campaign.
You can't make this shit up.
@Stoori @forteller Please see https://github.com/liberapay/liberapay.org/issues/30 for details about the issue of using Liberapay as an individual in Finland.
@Liberapay @forteller Ok, VAT is another endless swamp in itself, I can feel that.
Could it be possible to get out of the VAT problem by allowing rewards only to individuals who are exempt of VAT because of small revenue (less than 10k€/year)? I mean, ticking a box like ”I confirm that I'm exempted from VAT” before allowing the use of a rewards system?
I guess that would help many minor artists and developers.
@forteller @Liberapay @Stoori
I read 'somewhere' of an #NGO that had setup in order to manage #taxes for #startups {scratches brain for link!}
@Stoori @Liberapay What!? How is that possible to forbid such a thing? That's the craziest thing I've heard.
But yeah, that's an important feature missing. I think they're working on it, though. Check their github