> I don't understand why the PSF is begging me to donate by showing an intrusive (and borderline manipulative) banner ad disrupting my reading flow.
Putting aside matters of real-world politics and "culture war", my main objection to the PSF is their funding allocation. Almost all core developers are volunteering (aside from a couple of "developer-in-residence" positions; we're talking about on the order of a hundred volunteers here), and presumably not all of them have high-paying day jobs at major tech companies (although certainly a lot of the more easily recognized names do). Many more administrative staff are paid, not obscenely much but certainly more than zero.
And then the lion's share of the rest of the budget goes to operating PyCon US. I guess (reviewing the financial reports) this is profitable for them, given that their "operating service revenue" must be pretty close to 100% from that. But it's hard for me to imagine why people would pay those prices to see talks that will later be available on YouTube (and which could almost universally do with a lot of editing) unless they're really there to meet people in person. Meanwhile other meetups worldwide get a pittance in support. I know that there are grants awarded specifically to enable the less privileged to attend PyCon, but the whole thing still strikes me as rather elitist.
But on the other hand, I do sympathize with the Python project (not so much the Foundation) being severely underfunded for what it is. When I see the Wikipedia banners I'm disgusted because I know the Wikimedia Foundation is already, by non-profit "do good things on the Internet" foundation standards, absolutely drowning in cash. But the PSF's existing dues and contributions wouldn't even cover the costs of the "Packaging Work Group / Infrastructure / Other" category in the 2024 breakdown. And that is without considering Fastly's generous in-kind donation of bandwidth (which AIUI is in the exabyte/year range now). The PSF really have not "been paid massively", notwithstanding estimates of the value of that in-kind donation. You can see the numbers for yourself (https://www.python.org/psf/annual-report/2024/).