On the other hand, I don't quite know where I stand on accepting donations for writing free software. I feel like it leads to perverse incentives for maintainers and contributors alike.

My feeling here is that the best way to earn a living off of OSS is writing books about it, selling support, speaking engagements, etc. Someday I would like to earn a living from writing OSS, but I'm not super-inclined to do these other things either. That really just leaves working for a company like RedHat, and drawing a salary to write OSS. That just means your work isn't self-directed anymore.

What I'd really like to see happen, if it hasn't happened already, is a funding platform that only accepts donations from "qualified donors" and funds a small, curated list of projects/people and anonymizes whose funding goes to what projects/people. Projects/People are selected by a mix of donor votes, community votes and some equivalent of PageRank. Funding allocation is split up the same way, trying to divert the most money to the highest-impact people & projects.

Not that I have the slightest inclination that anyone would want to use this :(