http://blog.getpaint.net/2007/07/13/making-money-with-freewa...
More typical is SyntaxHighlighter, which is the JS syntax highlighting thing that everyone and their dog uses on their blog. The author has raised about $100 in donations so far (number pulled off site). I'm one quarter of that, because his software saved me so much work I donated the USD equivalent of one sale of my software to him. Since he started accepting donations his software has been, conservatively, downloaded several hundred thousand times by people who use it to increase their commercial and professional opportunities.
Compare that to commercial software for a moment: I sell about a hundred dollars worth of licenses to my bingo thingee a day, on rather substantially less than several hundred thousand installs.
Which is a long way to say "Charge money for value".
(Relatedly, I am reminded of a good line I heard from a developmental economist once: Only one country ever got rich from foreign aid, and the Vatican is not a great model for Africa.)
I suppose it's generally the most altruistic that give a to a website. It's not like you're curing diseases or saving lives, generally.
Word to the wise: be smart about minimums and maximums. If you ask for a dollar, you get a dollar. Ask for $20, or make it completely open, and you might get more. There's obviously a psychology to it worth studying.
That said, donations are not our revenue model, so we've taken the button down. :-)
From their forums:
March Donations: $2997.46 and 50 billion dollars in expired bank notes from Zimbabwe February Donations: $1428.62 January Donations: $2099.48 December Donations: $5279.49 November Donations: $1305.10
This is all small numbers though, since my game inherently doesn't scale.
According to them, you need 2 things to make this work - 1) steady regular audience 2) they have to really like you or at least what you have to say
We're holding an API contest too, and I'd love to see plugins into web frameworks to make donations built into the site. http://tipjoy.com/APIcontest
Where donations work is when there is an obvious good cause attached to the donation. People will donate when it feels right. But getting a product is not a cause for donation.
tipjoy of course is the rolls royce of donations for your web site. Can't get any simpler than that, and simplicity is key.
Why we don't have it yet? I'd guess regulations. The moment you write this software you're more or less a bank. If someone found a way to circumvent this would make the internet a huge favor.
Personally, I hate the idea of "donations" in this sense. I would rather support your work/ideas/project by purchasing a product you profit from, than just hand you cash.