Companies aren’t making squat from happy fans donating a token amount to show support of the software. Everything adjacent to the open source software is profitable (enterprise sales, support contracts, hardware, corporate sponsors/funding, and so forth), but you’re going to have a really hard time selling something to consumers when they can just as easily get it for free.
It’s not illegal, but it’s not profitable.
Companies aren’t making squat from happy fans donating a token amount to show support of the software. Everything adjacent to the open source software is profitable (enterprise sales, support contracts, hardware, corporate sponsors/funding, and so forth), but you’re going to have a really hard time selling something to consumers when they can just as easily get it for free.