To top it off, if you put a donation link in your about box when you release your totally free software in their App Store, they will reject it in review. Free apps are not allowed to include a donation link to their own website.
It's to the point where they won't even let people enrich their ecosystem for free unless you dance to their tune. It's very, very hard to take anything other than a dim view of such despicable behavior.
Donations is just another model of making money from software. So you're going to use App Store for free and make money without Apple getting their cut. It's understandable why Apple does not accept it.
It's not free. There's a $99 membership fee every year, even for an altruistic person offering nothing but a single useful extension/app that makes zero income.
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Let's imagine a feature request on GitHub:
USER: Safari supports the WebExtension API now. Please port your cool extension to Safari.
DEVELOPER: Cool. I'll maybe try doing that this weekend!
USER: Oh, by the way, you'll need to be on the hook for $99/yr for the rest of your life, so that Safari users can install the extension.
I still can't get my head wrapped around the complaint that the developer program costs $100/yr, as though this were some great barrier to entry. To put it in perspective, I subscribe to <deep breath> Prime, Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, HBO Now, Apple One, Office365, PS+, and Xbox Live, and that's just off the top of my head. Most of them are for purely-optional entertainment, and all of them cost more money than the developer program. I suspect most people who frequent this board pay for several of these too. In comparison, the $100/yr for the developer program is not a lot of money. It's certainly comparable with other optional digital services. It's less than a single restaurant lunch per month.
You can complain that it's not right to charge for the program, but the developer program has a cover charge to keep out the riff raff. I don't think this is a bad thing. We all know how much junk is in the App Store as it is, and how long it takes to get a review. Imagine if they didn't charge for the opportunity to submit apps? How much soon-abandoned junk would suddenly appear, and how long would it take for proper apps to get approved?
A Chrome/Firefox user expending some effort to make their existing extension available to Safari users is doing those users a favour. Generally one doesn't have to additionally start donating money to someone's preferred charity when already doing them a favour.
You're going to have plenty time to Wrap Your Head Around this dynamic by simply observing how the Safari WebExtension ecosystem plays out.
I'm struggling to understand how I could have been misunderstood. $100/yr is $8.33/mo. Even a burger meal at a fast food joint is that much now. Ergo: less than a single lunch PER MONTH. Where did I lose you?
If you believe that donations accepted by authors of entirely free/open source software are "just another model of making money from software", I don't know what to tell you.
I don't understand it, so I don't think it's fair to call it "understandable".
It's to the point where they won't even let people enrich their ecosystem for free unless you dance to their tune. It's very, very hard to take anything other than a dim view of such despicable behavior.