liberapay / liberapay.org Goto Github PK

This thread is for general updates about the Liberapay org. Previous year: #10.

This issue is about updating our Terms of Service. I only have one change in mind at the moment, but since we have to notify all users of ToS changes we don't want to do it every week, so this issue is not limited to this one change.

It looks like many projects that rely on donations publish a list of their sponsors to thank them. Strictly speaking one could argue that they're not really donations since the donor is getting something in return (publicity), but that's open to interpretation. I think we should consider that thanking donors is okay, and explicitly allow this practice in our terms, thus allowing projects who thank their sponsors to use Liberapay.

Liberapay should be declared to the CNIL.

Some time ago we received an email from a UK police officer requesting information about some people who briefly used Liberapay back in 2016.

After thinking about it, I have now sent the available information (email addresses, unconfirmed identity information, payment details).

It's the contract between the Liberapay organization and the users of the service it provides. What do we need/want to put into this contract?

Yesterday we received an email from a judicial police officer requesting information about the owner of a Liberapay account.

The document mentions “Public insults, Public provocation to discrimination, hatred, violence” as the reason for the request.

The YouTube channel linked to the account looks full of crap (conspiracies, etc.), so the request is probably justified.

I've sent what we have in response:

• the email address associated with the account
• the IP address at the time the account was created
• the ID of the associated Stripe account

One way the Mangopay crisis might have been avoided is if usage of Liberapay had been restricted to a specific set of non-problematic users, like Gratipay 2.0 was. This thread is to discuss whether Liberapay's neutrality principle (enshrined in article 10 of the bylaws) should be preserved as-is, or reworded, or abandoned completely. The current wording is:

The service is open to all, the organization only excludes a user if it has a legal or contractual obligation to do so.

(I'm not pushing for a change right now, I'm merely opening the discussion, partially as a "response" to liberapay/liberapay.com#1209.)

We need to figure out what to do when we have money whose origin is fraudulent and we can't refund it.

Ironically, Liberapay could now benefit from having a legal entity in the US. I thought I had already created an issue about this, but it seems we only have the related one liberapay/liberapay.com#1354.

An easy way to do this might be Stripe Atlas, however we would get some backlash from the community for setting things up that way in a “tax haven” (Is Delaware a Tax Haven?).

Is there anyone in the US who would be willing to help us do this differently?

[fr] C'est le moment d'élire le représentant légal de Liberapay, car mon mandat se termine le 19 décembre. Il y a 4 candidats possibles : moi, @Zatalyz, @MartinDelille, et @MarionRousseaux. La décision est au consensus. Les 4 candidats sont aussi les seules personnes ayant le droit de vote. Année précédente : #19.

[en] It's time for the election of Liberapay's legal representative, as my mandate ends on December 19th. Previous election: #19.

For teams that only have one member, it may not make sense to the user to check that their nominal take is set above 0.00, because why look at takes if you're the only one taking? The assumption may be that all donations will come to you automatically.

I suggest that the nominal take be set at some reasonable amount (10? 100?) for the first team member. Then when that team member goes to add a member, a notice could be displayed that shows the takes table and suggests modifying this value.

See, for example, https://liberapay.com/SocialCoop/income/.

Quote from liberapay/liberapay.com#204:

We just received our first invoice from Mangopay, and it was a bad surprise: we owe them €0.75.

While the amount isn't a problem, sending the money to Mangopay is: we don't have money in our bank account yet, so I can't immediately wire it from there, even if the bank's website would let me do that (I'm not sure it would, I think we need to set up some kind of 2FA first).

So, I think I'll send the money from my personal bank account. Hopefully that's okay.

[FR] 🇫🇷
Bonjour à toutes et tous,
Je vous annonce publiquement ma démission du Comité Directeur de Liberapay, à compter de ce jour. Mes problèmes de santé ont empirés au cours de la dernière année et je recentre mon énergie sur les projets où je peux faire avancer les choses. J'en avais parlé il y a quelques mois avec Changaco et les récents soucis avec Mangopay me confirment la nécessité de laisser ma place. Bonne continuation !

[EN] 🇬🇧
Hello everyone,
I am publicly announcing my resignation from the Liberapay Board of Directors, effective today. My health problems have gotten worse over the past year and I am refocusing my energy on projects where I can make a difference. I had talked about it a few months ago with Changaco and the recent problems with Mangopay confirm the need to leave my place. Keep up the good work! (Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator)

I've set up the https://liberapay.com/LiberapayOrg/ account, added it to the Liberapay team, and set its weekly take to 0.60 euros. That amount is based on what I paid last year for the liberapay.com and liberapay.org domain names, which as of now are the only things that the org should pay for.

It's time for the election of Liberapay's legal representative, as my mandate ends on December 19th (#2 (comment)). This issue will be discussed in French for simplicity.

C'est le moment d'élire le représentant légal de Liberapay, car mon mandat se termine le 19 décembre. Il y a 4 candidats possibles : moi, @Zatalyz, @MartinDelille, et @MarionRousseaux. La décision est au consensus. Les 4 candidats sont aussi les seules personnes ayant le droit de vote.

[FR] 🇫🇷
Bonjour à toutes et tous,

N'étant plus impliqué dans le projet depuis plusieurs mois, je souhaiterai démissionner du comité de direction de Liberapay.

Je vous souhaite une bonne continuation!

[EN] 🇬🇧
Hello everyone,

Since I'm not implicated in the project since many months, I would like to resign of the Liberapay board of directors.

I wish you a good continuation!

MangoPay has sent us an email warning us about possibly fraudulent payments made by one specific user, and advising us to refund them.

I'll probably suspend the user before tomorrow's payday, but first I'm going to ask MangoPay a few questions.

From liberapay/salon#32:

recruit more people into the Liberapay organization, because legally speaking it doesn't exist anymore if it's down to a single member, so it's not safe to have only two members

We could accomplish that by recruiting more codirectors, but we also have the option of modifying the bylaws to add a new category of members who wouldn't have all the powers and responsibilities of the codirectors.

Opinions?

Previous year: #34.

First step: sign the MangoPay contract and send it by mail.

Then there are documents to upload:

• The signed bylaws of the organization – Les statuts certifiés conformes de l’association
• Proof of registration of the organization – Récépissé de déclaration de l’association – requires completion of #2
• VAT number (if applicable) – Numéro de TVA de la société (si imposable)
• ID of the organization's representative – La pièce d’identité du dirigeant habilité à engager le Partenaire
• Declaration on honor signed by the representative – Une Déclaration sur l’honneur complétée et signée par le dirigeant
• CV of the representative (LinkedIn PDF acceptable) – Le CV du dirigeant (PDF LinkedIn acceptés)
• Extract of the representative's criminal record – Une extrait du casier judiciaire du dirigeant
• Your terms of service, signed – vos CGU signées et paraphées – requires completion of #4
• Our BIC and IBAN – Votre BIC et IBAN – requires completion of #3

We also have to add MangoPay's terms and the "Powered by" logos to liberapay.com.

Finally, submit our application.

This thread is for general updates about the Liberapay org. Previous year: #22.

In Lille @whit537 asked me who decides to prevent a user from using the social features of Liberapay (per article 1 paragraph 2 of the terms of service), and I was like "uh, me?" because we don't have a process in place for that. I think we should modify the rules of procedure to delegate this task to a group of "moderators" selected by the codirectors, make it mandatory to notify the affected users, and probably give them the right to appeal the decision.

The MangoPay contract requires us to undertake to provide a "call centre", and I'm pretty sure Liberapay fits the very broad definition of "electronic commerce" and is therefore obligated to be "effectively contactable" by phone.

We could use some help from a professional in figuring out taxes and other legal issues. Unfortunately I don't know any lawyers, much less one who might be willing to help us without expecting us to pay them a large sum of money in a short period of time.

Feature: Add /on/NotABug

What is NotABug?
NotABug is a very popular code hosting website.
https://notabug.org

What do you want to happen?
Currently you can go to "https://liberapay.com/on/[platform]/[platform_user]/" to pledge money in case somebody does join Liberapay. Currently this feature is only avalible for Bitbucket, Github, and Twitter. My feature request is to add NotABug to that mix.

Do you want to support this issue? Post a bounty on it! We accept bounties via BountySource!

In light of liberapay/salon#232 we need to figure out once and for all whether or not it would be possible for Liberapay to get its own e-money emitter license.

We've received two questions today about using Liberapay to fund adult content. Obviously there's nothing against it in our terms, so as usual it comes down to mangopay's policies. I looked through their terms again and didn't find any explicit clause against adult content. The related section "9. User Commitments" is worded in a broad general way:

The User guarantees that no part of its profile on the Website will harm the rights of third parties or is contrary to the law, to public order or to accepted principles of morality.

The User undertakes not to:

• Execute the Framework Contract in an illegal manner or in conditions that are likely to
  damage, deactivate, overload or impair the Website;
• Assume the identity of another person or entity, falsify or conceal his/her identity or age, or
  create any false identity; or
• Disseminate personal data or information concerning a third party, such as postal addresses,
  telephone numbers, email addresses, bank card numbers etc.

In the event of User default, the Issuer reserves the right to take any appropriate measures in order to stop the relevant actions. The Issuer will also be entitled to suspend and/or block access to the Account.

Today I received a letter from a German prosecutor (Staatsanwalt), dated July 7th, requesting information about a Liberapay account owner. The envelope contains both the original letter in German and a French translation of it.

The prosecutor wants: the person's name, postal address, email address, and bank account details. We only have: two email addresses, and partial bank account information (through Stripe). The account owner appears to be in the United States.

Hi,

I got a new job, and since South Korea's anti-corruption legislation do not allow me to sit as a co-director of external organization without explicit written approval of new employer, I am resigning, effective 2021-09-01 (Sept. 1, 2021).

I haven't received a response to the email I sent to Marion last week (#53 (comment)), so I'm initiating a vote to officially terminate her codirectorship, in accordance with article 4 of the rules of procedure:

The exclusion of a member requires the approval of an absolute majority of members. The vote lasts one week, during this time the voters can change their votes and the targeted member can defend themself or resign.

@jorgesumle You and I are the only two active codirectors left, so your vote is decisive.

you might have the possibility to request the right to use @liberapay on twitter based on Twitter Inactive account policy, if you can show that you have a registered trademark on the name: maybe having registered a legal entity with the name is enough?
It's not that much a big deal, but it does make mentionning liberapay less error prone.
Thanks for this great project!

Now that the bylaws are (pretty much) done, we have to actually sign them. How shall we proceed?

Maintenant que les statuts sont finis (ou presque), il faut les signer. Comment procède-t-on ?

Which bank? How about La Banque Postale? Is there any reason not to choose that one?

What do we need? Maybe a debit card to pay for the few things the organization is supposed to pay for, like servers. On the other hand we probably don't need cheques.

If we want to launch a bug bounty program we would need to be able to financially reward security researchers that report valid issues. @Changaco noted the following in liberapay/liberapay.com#549 (comment):

Using the organization's funds requires consensus among the codirectors.

I would like to hear some thoughts on this.

Previous year: #44.

Previous year: #20.

We still have more than €10k stuck in wallets.

This thread is for general updates about the Liberapay org.

This issue is about Liberapay's compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation.

We've received an email asking us to close a Liberapay account which is allegedly illegal.

Here is the gist of the message:

Under French law, it is 100% illegal to facilitate financial transactions for Holocaust deniers and hate speech advocates such as the following individual, who is also currently a criminal fugitive in Eastern Europe to avoid United States federal proesecutors:

I have replied that we will investigate the validity of those claims, and notified the accused user.

Nous avons reçu un courriel nous demandant de fermer un compte Liberapay supposément illégal.

Le message accuse le détenteur du compte de négationnisme et d'incitation à la haine, affirme que la loi française nous interdit de faciliter le transfert d'argent vers de tels individus, et ajoute que l'accusé est un fugitif aux yeux de la justice des États-Unis et qu'il se cache en Europe de l'Est.

J'ai répondu que nous allions vérifier tout ça, et notifié l'accusé.

MangoPay has released a new reporting feature that allows downloading a whole month of transactions at once, we should use it to build ourselves an archive, just in case.

Current KYC (Know Your Customer) regulations require collecting information on any person who has 25% or more control over a business or organization. Liberapay currently has 4 codirectors, so each one of us has 25% of the voting rights. Adding a 5th member would lower that number to 20% and save me from having to fill an annoying UBO (Ultimate Beneficial Owners) form every time I create a new payment account for the org.

The current official mission of the Liberapay organization is to "provide an international computer service easing monetary donations between persons" (article 2 of the bylaws). This is relatively broad, but not enough: "donations" is both too strict and too imprecise.

In 4 weeks I will be at an event organized by @MarionRousseaux and others. We'll work on figuring out if what they want to do fits into the scope of Liberapay, and if so how our mission should be reworded to allow it. In the meantime if you have suggestions or other thoughts feel free to post them here.

Related issue: #12.

Article 6 of the Rules of Procedure states:

A report on the status of the association is written by the members at least once a year, and sent through the internet to the users of the service who have opted to receive it.

We don't yet have a setting that allows users to subscribe to the yearly report, but we should still write it.

Previous year: #41.

Hi!

Since we are part of the organization, I would found useful to connect in order to better know each other. My contact information are all listed here: http://www.martindelille.com
Feel free to add me to the network you use the most!

The number of codirectors of the Liberapay nonprofit has dwindled back to only two (as a result of #49, #53 and #54). This is problematic because two is the legal minimum and because it can make some things more difficult (see #38).

Please post a comment if you would be willing to join the board.

It would be good for the Liberapay organization to have proper accounting compliant with French standards (whatever those are). Basically it would be a log/ledger containing the transactions from both our bank account and our Liberapay account (we can export that data easily), appropriately tagged and linked to the corresponding invoice (when there is one). Some or all of the invoices would only be accessible by organization members.

[en] In gratipay/inside.gratipay.com#1196 @whit537 has proposed "merging" Gratipay into Liberapay. Concretely, as far as the Liberapay organization is concerned, this would mean acquiring assets from Gratipay at a symbolic price. We haven't made a detailed list of assets but the main one is obviously the database, then the domain names, the Twitter account, etc.

[fr] Dans gratipay/inside.gratipay.com#1196 @whit537 a proposé "l'intégration" de Gratipay dans Liberapay. Concrètement, en ce qui concerne l'association Liberapay, cela revient à acheter certaines choses qui appartiennent à Gratipay, à un prix symbolique. Nous n'avons pas fait de liste détaillée mais la ressource principale est évidemment la base de données, puis les noms de domaines, le compte Twitter, etc.

Email received two days ago:

Hello,

I'm a creator on Patreon, but I would like to use Liberapay as well (ideally I'd move to Liberapay exclusively, but at this point I'm not sure that's a good idea). The main problem with moving to Liberapay is that rewards to supporters don't seem to be allowed. I don't like rewards myself either, but the Finnish law doesn't allow individuals to ask for donations for themselves, so I need to sell something. On Patreon I'm selling early access to my monthly reports about my open source software development work (the reports are later published on my public blog).

Would Liberapay consider granting an exception for us poor Finns who have to suffer the silly law? At least when the reward is only a small token whose only purpose is to make the use of Liberapay not-obviously illegal. (I'm not sure the token reward actually makes my use of Patreon or Liberapay legal, but clarifying that would probably require a court case, and I don't expect anyone to have any incentive to sue me.)

My response:

Hi,

I'm sorry to say that there isn't much we can do right now. Even if we granted an exception to individuals from Finland our platform simply doesn't provide any way of rewarding patrons. Moreover allowing any kind of selling through Liberapay may not be legally possible without first implementing the collection of VAT from EU-based buyers, like Patreon does.

May I copy-paste your message to our public issue tracker for future reference? If not I'll summarize/paraphrase instead.

Their response:

Yes, you may use my message in any way you like.

The lack of support for rewards in the Liberapay UI should not be a problem in my case. I can instruct my supporters to contact me by email if they want the reward. I won't be able to verify that they are actually giving me money, but I don't mind.

If allowing rewards results in legal problems for Liberapay, then that's of course an understandable reason to not grant any exceptions.