I never liked that Atwood post because he cherry picked one open source product to raise a stink about when there are thousands of other individual projects that can use donations. Also, the Apache Foundation, the PSF, the FSF, and many more organizations have a history of taking and using donations to advance the development and use of many open source projects.
As for your comments about not being motivated to work on FOSS or not understanding why it exists, I'm not sure how that's relevant to this discussion. I don't have the time or inclination to argue with you about why OSS exists and is important, but while it's here and actively helping me do my job, I don't understand an argument against supporting those projects with bug reports, patches, and yes, money.
Maybe I wasn't clear. I just have a hard time supporting something (financially) when I don't really understand the motivations of the people behind it. I'm all for bug reports and the like.
Why do you think you need to understand their motivations? It's a simple proposition: you give them money, and they make the software better because they are able to buy servers, take time off work, etc.
As for your comments about not being motivated to work on FOSS or not understanding why it exists, I'm not sure how that's relevant to this discussion. I don't have the time or inclination to argue with you about why OSS exists and is important, but while it's here and actively helping me do my job, I don't understand an argument against supporting those projects with bug reports, patches, and yes, money.