Personally I wouldn't mind the ask, it's the pop-up that covers content that I mind.

Genuine question, but have you seen the popup being described? It's absolutely huge, and has a fake x button pattern. The complaint is on how disruptive it is, not the ask for donations

No, the issue is the intrusive way of asking.

It’s not Python asking for donations, it’s the Python Software Foundation. Which means donations won’t necessarily go to improving Python or running PyPI, but your money might end up funding a conference in Trumpistan, outreach for the world’s most popular programming language, or political activities.

This is very important. It's one thing to have your money improve CPython, it's another to have your money go towards an outreach program to help disadvantaged girls in Uganda write a Tetris clone in Python. It's similar to what happens with Mozilla. A way of choosing what exactly will be done with your money is fundamental to get donations.

Why would I want to donate to pypi? So that corporations can redownload the same files over and over millions of times in their ci/cd and be lazy about creating a local mirror?

Or to fund more integration with github, or remove more features?

Let's not forget funding pypi so that they may remove other features such as gpg signatures.

are the donations being distributed among the actual contributors, or do they largely go towards funding DEI initiatives? :)

I got a 2 weeks ban from the python discuss when I suggested that contributors that contribute on behalf of an employer should disclose the fact and who the employer is.

Looks like you think you know the answer, so for all of us who don't, please enlighten us