Money means responsibility. This is a classy stance imho.
No, I don't agree. Communicate clearly that donations are in no way payment for the work being / to be done, does not constitute any preferential treatment / service agreement, and you're good.
This setup works for me well, and I have no issues with people's expectations.
That said, for an active maintainer who is currently accepting donations (ESPECIALLY recurring donations), making a good-faith effort to deliver on requests from supporters (certainly bugs, and ideally features) is expected. Failure to make that effort doesn't mean you owe anyone anything, but it might mean you're a jerk.
Even if the maintainer makes it clear and explicit that donations don't grant such expectations? If a donor feels entitled despite clarity from the maintainer, that's on the donor.
If you want to pay the maintainer to work on a feature you want, the proper course should be to just contact the maintainer and work something out, no?
That said, the drama might be more outlier...I've never really had an open source project that's big enough for people to want to give me money for it, so I will totally admit I'm speaking out of ignorance.