Investigate legality of GitHub sponsors in Finland

[Mikaela]

In Finland, unless you are an association with a money collection permit for a specific purpouse, donations are illegal as the donator must be given something in return.

• This effectively makes LiberaPay illegal in Finland: Finland liberapay/liberapay.org#30
  • 2019 situation on mass money collecting sites (Patreon), if target can be seen as not being Finland it may be ok? Finland liberapay/liberapay.org#30 (comment)

However I have heard of Finnish FOSS contributors giving access to sponsors-only communications, and I think there was a mention somewhere of GitHub sponsors having option of allowing access to sponsors-only repository, which I think may be worth looking into sometime.

I am only aware of one case of someone being interested in sponsoring my FOSS activity though, so this is not a huge priority.

[Mikaela]

Police of Finland: Crowdfunding and money collection campaigns:

Is a money collection permit required for reward-based crowdfunding or for pre-selling products?
No permit is required as long as the buyers genuinely get something in return for the money that they pay. This can mean, for example, pre-selling products at a fixed price that corresponds to the product’s exchange value. The pre-sold products also need to be supplied to the buyers within a reasonable period of time, and only to those buyers who have paid for the product in advance. In other words, the product must not be available to everyone regardless of whether or not they have prepaid.

All parties involved in the transaction must understand that they are engaging in trading: the buyers must know that they are buying a product and not just donating money or supporting a cause, and the seller must recognise that they are selling products rather than asking for donations.

Crowdfunding campaigns must not be executed in a way that the participants are not able to tell whether they are involved in a business transaction or contributing to a money collection. Obscuring the line between money collection and business is prohibited.

There goes the idea of using sponsors-only repository.

We intend to use an international crowdfunding platform. Do we still need a money collection permit?
A money collection permit is always required if your donors are in Finland. Your donors are deemed to be in Finland if you are appealing to the Finnish public.

Simply using an international website or making your appeal in a language other than Finnish or Swedish does not mean that you can run your campaign without a money collection permit or without filing a small-scale money collection notice. However, if you are clearly limiting your appeal to an audience outside of Finland and your campaign is deemed not to be taking place in Finland, then no money collection permit is required.

I think this section applies directly to GitHub Sponsors which to my knowledge doesn't allow refusing donations from specific countries. I opened a feature request to GitHub a moment ago, which potentially could make it legal, but I am not a lawyer; community/community#14855.