The subscription thing is key, although maybe a generational thing. I would happily pay a flat $60-100 for each major version upgrade I choose to adopt, but I won't just give them a direct monthly tap into my bank account.

So do you donate that amount every major release?

It's purely a theoretical, since nobody has offered me a choice of that model - either I'm a source of ad revenue whether I want to be or not (Chrome, FireFox, Safari), or I'm in a captive ecosystem where I'm already paying a premium (Safari, Chrome for android)

I think asking people if they're one of a small of handful people donating into the void to a is a straw man.

Last I checked, you can't donate to fund firefox development.

You can donate to Mozilla, who then go on to spend their money on things other than firefox development. Or development in general.

Because unfortunelly subscriptions is the only way to make people pay that would otherwise pirate, it is the modern version of using hardware keys.