They provided the CSAM detection tool and Fediseer. Those project have donations tools, but I’ve never seen their creators threatening to stop developing if they don’t get enough money the way you are.

Note that motivation to develop is a tricky business. I still have development motivation for FOSS, but it wanes and waxes seemingly on its own. Monetary compensation is there to help me maintain it a little bit further as it shows some direct appreciation, and I like when my voluntary work is also not costing me money 🙃

That said, I also recognize that there’s other forms of contributions except monetary. If someone is contributing code, or sharing their GPU via the AI Horde, helping with documentation and community outreach, or even carrying niche lemmy community activity on their own, I consider it also valuable on its own, akin to monetary support. I do think that people who are mostly lurking and consuming the work I do, could find it in their hand to give something like 5$ a year or so. It doesn’t take a lot of these people to provide enough to cover the costs of hosting and coffee.