Liberapay is meant to be used to fund the development and maintenance of common resources. So far it only allows doing this through recurrent donations, which makes it suitable for a limited number of use cases.
The most common of those valid use cases are:
- crowdfunding the development and maintenance of freely usable software
- crowdfunding the costs of providing a free online service
- crowdfunding the production of freely accessible art
- crowdfunding the curation and sharing of freely accessible knowledge
Incorrect uses include:
- Begging. The money must be for something the recipient does that benefits other people.
- Selling. Thanking patrons is allowed, but rewarding them is forbidden.
Liberapay is built on top of payment processors that handle the actual fund transfers. These processors have their own rules that recipients must comply with: