Comment by Dylan16807

> Surely "the right thing to do" includes some element of the authors' explicitly stated preferences about how they wish to be treated.

It does! And they wish to get donations. There's a button right at the top on the site making that clear.

> In this case, they chose -- explicitly -- to NOT require any payment or contribution from anyone.

Yes, so what? It is true that they wished to not require payment. That is one of their wishes, but they have more than one wish. And if they required payment, that wouldn't be a donation anyway.