Donations | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository says Liberapay is a recommend donation platform as is has “lower fees” than Open Collective, while GitHub says it does not charge any fees for sponsorships from personal accounts, so 100% of these sponsorships go to the sponsored developer or organization. Isn’t that means that GitHub should be preferred?
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If you want to contribute financially, we recommend using a free (as in free software) donation platform like Liberapay or Open Collective. Liberapay has lower fees but Open Collective allows more flexibility and transparency on how the funds are used. Both platforms allow for recurrent donations which are highly desirable for making F-Droid sustainable.
I don’t know how the quote from the website could be more clear, your confusion is fully answered there. Price isn’t the only consideration.
Liberapay and Open Collective are the only options being compared, because they’re the only ones committed to (software) freedom. GitHub doesn’t make the cut in that regard.
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- It’s completely unclear, how donation platform may be free.
- As for me, as a sponsor/donor the price is the main consideration. Even if some service is not free several times, I would prefer to use it if it does not charge a commission and transfers 100% of my funds to the recipient.
- Liberapay process payments through Stripe and PayPal. What freedom are you talking about? Moreover, GitHub also uses Stripe.
- How exactly Liberapay and Open Collective are committed to freedom?
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Liberapay and Open Collective commitment to software freedom shouldn’t matter as there are restrictions on who can donate and from where.
You can’t self host Liberapay and also Open Collective I think.
Cryptocurrencies are more committed to freedom (anyone and from anywhere can donate) and software freedom than these platforms, only issue is that developers usually don’t offer them as options or just adds a Bitcoin address, which is public and have a really high fees. You should encourage developers to add Monero donation address as it is private and have a really low fees. However, a problem with cryptocurrency wallets are that most don’t support recurring payments.
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You’ve changed from your original point, which falsely implied that the only relevant detail here for F-Droid is price. But that’s fine, I’ll respond to your new points.
They’re referring to the four freedoms, I would have thought obviously, as they are very explicit, but maybe you haven’t heard of it. There it is, anyway, just in case. You asked the same question in at least three different ways, that’s the answer to it there.
If you prefer to use GitHub Sponsors, for whatever reason you like, it’s right there on the original page you linked. It is unfortunate that you didn’t read the page, it’s very well put together.
I included a screenshot in case going to read the actual page is too taxing for you. There’s a neat little table and everything, where you can see the four entities that they take donations from, and the different types of payment which are possible.
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I hadn’t heard this, and can’t easily see what you’re alluding to after a quick search. Who is restricted, from where, and why?
Anyway, I don’t disagree with all your points, and sure, Liberapay and Open Collective aren’t perfect solutions. Neither is cryptocurrency (as you say yourself).
It’s cultural, too, of course - I do believe some cryptocurrency projects are seriously committed to freedom, but the other 90%(+) crypto projects that have proven to be nothing but shady grift and outright scams have burned a lot of people, and got loads of bad press. That makes it a tricky one to promote front and centre as the way to donate.
Would you not agree with that? Or you think Monero is so good, that it’s worth that risk?
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and that’s an issue because?
Your first message: “GH Sponsors is cheapest, why does F-Droid promote Liberapay then, surely it’d make more sense to promote GH Sponsors if it’s all about price??”
Response: “They say explicitly that freedom is also a consideration for them, and not only price”
Your second message: “Freedom? What does that even mean?? I only care about price! GH Sponsors is just as good as Liberapay!”
Response: “They have GH Sponsors too, just use that then”
Third message: “Liberapay by default allows donations from every country but includes the option of limiting the countries that can donate to a project - probably for legal reasons but regardless - that’s country discrimination, man!”
I’m sorry for caricaturing you, it’s childish of me, but in my defense you are being ridiculous. Why didn’t you just state you’re on a holy crusade against Liberapay in the first place, instead of wasting everyone’s time?
Go on, let it out - what did Liberapay really do to you? Did they steal your lunch money, or something?
Does that mean you are going to withhold any donation to F-Droid?
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Your funds can be frozen any time. And https://liberapay.com/about/global PayPal and Stripe is not supported in all countries. PayPal is notoriously known for also freezing accounts randomly for no reason at all.
Both are using Cloudflare CDNs.
Yes, most crypto coins are scam and hype based pumping etc. But Monero is different, it doesn’t have a CEO (community based project) nor “dev tax” and no coins were no pre-mined. It is the only private by default cryptocurrency, you can learn more from their website https://www.getmonero.org/.
You can’t freeze funds unless you use a custodial wallet (hosted by exchanges).
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Is that bad, for some reason? I know very little about Cloudfare.
I think PayPal are terrible, yes, absolutely. Stripe I know nothing about, and have never consciously used (but may have unwittingly, I suppose).
The situation sounds less than ideal, indeed. I don’t know what more Liberapay are supposed to do, though, in the circumstances. What do you suggest? You seem to know your stuff. Is there some payment option they could offer which would be great for everyone, or much better?
I know about Monero, but haven’t gone much into the details, although yes, it looks good, and thanks for letting me know more about how it works. F-Droid had been accepting cryptocurrency through Open Collective, it appears, and then they (Open Collective) stopped accepting cryptocurrency - the post describing why is here. It seems to be roughly in line with what I was guessing in my previous comment to you about reputational risk.
@cems hope your next post is not about monero yet again 
There’s two main concerns with cloudflare as I understand it.
- Due to their ubiquitly there are privacy concerns regarding the amount of network traffic that they process
- They’ve been accused of enabling organizations that are criminal, publish hate speach, promote abuse and other issues.
Essentially, they’re another tech company with a near-monopoly position who are pursuing money over social responsibility.
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Yes, setup a BTCPay Server which supports multiple cryptocurrencies along with traditional digital payments like PayPal, Stripe etc. Bank wire is an option too if that is not a problem for you.
Depends
BTCPay Server looks interesting, I’d a solid browse there. Seems like a pretty cool project.
Still, of course, setting up servers and maintaining them is time, effort and money. Notwithstanding the fact that using the three options of Liberapay, Open Collective and GH Sponsors probably satisfies the needs of the vast, vast majority of people who wish to donate, I presume [with perhaps the one exception of the very disgruntled OP in this thread, of course].
You haven’t addressed the fact that cryptocurrencies carry huge reputational risk nowadays too. Some people view anything with “crypto” anywhere near it with extreme hostility. Why take the risk, if the current solution is working well enough?
Isn’t that reputation because of scammers? How is it any different than receiving a phishing email or a message claiming that it’s your bank, does that make your bank’s reputation worse?
Define “well enough”, you can look up “CBDCs” on reddit etc, the current solution is broken and was never perfect.