I'm curious reluctant because of creating unrealistic expectations or some other issue?
Discussion
Several. So, offering a donation for certain project
1) allocates work towards that project, independent of its merit
2) may lead to sloppy evaluation before merge, if those responsible for merging also recipients
3) may lead to quarrel between supporters and detractors of a merge, if supporters are financially motivated
4) if several people work on a project for which a donation is outstanding, there may be quarrel about the relative amount of work each participant did, and hence how to split the donation
5) in general, leads to additional motivation structure among developers, and the existing one is already messy enough
6) best way to deal with is a long term, project agnostic commitment so a dev gets one or several years off to concentrate on building. Bu
(Oops, that post button was right under my middle finger 🤪)
But even that distorts the incentives, as some devs may want to work on something popular that attracts donations (e.g. speed), rather than something important that doesn't (e.g. privacy).
That's what I van remember. There was more, but it was a while ago. Anyway, it surprised me