Talk with Nadia Eghbal

[Changaco]

Hey @nayafia :-)

I've been following your work on open source, it's great!

We just launched Liberapay a couple weeks ago, and now that the initial bug-squashing and polishing phase is over I'm reaching out to you because it's potentially relevant to your work, and I'd like to have your opinion on it.

Since you're already familiar with Gratipay (I've seen your call with Chad), I'll put it this way: Liberapay is a fork of Gratipay. I invite you to read this comment about the differences between the two.

What do you think of the recurrent donations model? Do you think it could be part of the solution or that it'll never really work?

Also, I added Liberapay to http://fundingoss.com/ before we launched, can you change the Needs field to "More users making and receiving donations, translators, some legal advice, and developers."?

Thanks. :-)

[nayafia]

Hey there! Looks awesome, congrats on all your hard work! (And, updated the entry in fundingoss) Awesome that you're trying it under a nonprofit organization.

Cutting down the admin/back office work needed to accept donations is an amazing thing and can unlock more freedom/flexibility for individuals. I think any recurring donations model will need to heavily tap into companies to be seriously impactful. (There's room in this space for tipping, of course, but if we're talking substantial, recurring income, I haven't seen many examples of that coming from individual donations)

Are you going to support Liberapay itself through donations (as I believe Gratipay did), or raise other funding?

[Changaco]

The plan is for the service to be funded through itself (same as Gratipay indeed). We're basically building open source infrastructure, it's logical to try to fund it through Liberapay itself, it's what we're inviting others to do.

I think any recurring donations model will need to heavily tap into companies to be seriously impactful.

Back in the day Gittip actually had companies contributing substantial amounts of money. They were basically getting publicity in exchange since they showed up on the "leaderboards" of the homepage.

As I remember it, one thing they kept asking for was the ability to fund their accounts in advance instead of being charged every week, and as it turns out funding one's donations in advance is how Liberapay ended up working, so that could be a plus.

[Changaco]

We've just taken a first step towards businesses and other organizational donors by adding a "Sponsors" section to the homepage: https://liberapay.com/ :-)