[roncesvalles]

Exactly. It's much easier for a company to pay your price tag than to justify giving you a donation.

And it's pretty obvious why -- a purchase is a transaction with a clear expectation of what you're getting in return. If you donate, it's unclear what you're paying for and what the maintainer's obligations are.

The notion that you'd make some useful open-source project used by multi-billion-dollar companies and they'll throw a few pennies your way to make sure you keep the project alive is hippie bullshit.

Unless it's truly a well-established and well-governed project with a diligent maintainer at the helm (e.g. Vue.js), the only way companies financially support open-source is by contributing work or hiring the maintainer.