I donated once to Wikipedia and then I was getting Jimmy Wales in my mailbox basically like everyday.

That actually drove me away from ever wanting to donate to them. Then there was a lot of talking if they really are so much in need of money but that's different topic.

In contrast I donated to LibreOffice and it was perfectly quiet for one time donation and I am happy to donate from time to time as I use LibreOffice for my personal stuff.

The WMF is notorious for its donation banners making wildly exaggerated claims about the state of the Foundation (it needs some money to be operational, it is however not by any real stretch of the imagination in financial trouble or losing its independence because it doesn't get enough money; they have a massive endowment that can run Wikipedia for the next 50 years or so, and major corporations already give money to the WMF to keep it in the air, making the statements those donation messages give to regular readers very deceptive), scaring people in third world countries into parting with their meager savings because they are scared of the WMF vanishing through deceptive language and in general their donation drives are extremely intrusive to the respective Wikipedias.

I understand that the Document Foundation just wants to bring donations to the attention of their users, but the WMF is the worst point to compare it to.

I don’t like donation banners. I don’t like more that they’re necessary and actually work.

A small problem is they degrade the software even when I’ve already donated. The bigger problem is they’re a downward spiral: people get desensitized, so you have to add more aggressive banners, until you’re like the 33MB news sites where 90% of the screen is intrusive noise. Our society, offline and online, is already crammed with ugly boards asking us to give money.

There are ad-free spaces, and it’s at least theoretically possible to make money without ads yourself. I hope eventually ads will become less effective and people will become more inclined to donate (or something like UBI), so it will be more possible.

Until then, I don’t really fault LibreOffice for this. Especially because it’s FOSS, so people who really care can just remove it.

It's another thing for you to put a banner inside my computer, on the software I use to manage my own data: that ought to be a tool I use for my own purposes, and not a place for you to do what you want.

A tool which starts acting as an agent for its developers, not as an agent for me, is not a tool I want to continue using.

KDE's Plasma will popup a notification every once in a while asking for donation. When you close it, you won't hear from it again until the next fundraiser. I almost always donate as well.

If a software asks in a non-obtrusive way, ideally after I used it (either for a while or like in case of Jellyfin2Samsung after doing the one thing it's supposed to do), I don't mind at all.

I dislike apps (mostly websites) that keep asking for money, regardless of whether you already donated or not every single time you visit them.

How come there's no photos of the before/after? That would be much more useful than the condescension. They treat the reader like they've already whined with the least reasonable complaint. But they don't even bother to make their case properly, just point fingers at who else has done it, as if that's reason enough.

Wikipedia is NOT a good comparison. Their banners are obtrusive, obnoxious and the reason I stopped my $1/mo donation more than a decade ago. Well more specifically the begging/crying prompted me to look into their finances and spending and it turns out they were pretty irresponsible at least then. Lots of highly paid "administrators," software devs working on poorly thought out systems. Lots of interfering with volunteer contributions.

Many of the threads here are shameful and ignorant.

You know when users gang up on Freemium companies that monetize with ads? Acting like ads are the evil of the world, it's just because they want free stuff and don't want to 'pay' with ads.

This is an even more extreme example, they want free stuff and they become entitled to it, it's very common in Open Source, there's this very famous GitHub issue that goes something like "I don't want source code, give me an executable don't bother me with linux stuff..."

User demands are infinite, the more you provide, the more they will complain to you, because you are the ones that solve issues.

a very significant reason for useing linux is to avoid any and all distraction. Popups are a deal breaker, and a very very clear indication of the transition into just another part of the advertainment industrial complex.

you need money?, then help us become successful enough to pay the debt we feel.

poke me in the eye?

FUCK OFF

If that's the way they react to negative user feedback, they deserve more of it. Even Microsoft sometimes caves in if enough people complain - recall is now optional and I believe opt-in; there's noises about maybe not sticking AI in everything and letting you turn it off in future versions.