[Touch HD Windows Mobile ROM Development] NotATreoFan:
As a chef, and a moderator (chef came first), I'll add my thoughts.

I started into cooking when AT&T released their official WM6.1 ROM for the Kaiser. I always liked the design of AT&T ROMs, but not all of the bloat they included... most of which could not be uninstalled. I had the very "simple" goal of removing the bloat in an attempt to speed up the ROM, and increase storage space.

Once I downloaded the ROM, and extracted it using KaiserKitchen, I immediately realized that I was in over my head. I am a very good with PC and Mac computers in the professional/personal world, but I had never looked at the contents of a decompiled WM ROM. There are hundreds of folders, 10,000+ files, and no real explanation of what you're looking at... that is where XDA-Developers came in.

Within 1 week of public release, I was ready with a ROM that could be considered "extreme beta". It worked, and it was fast, but it had quite a few glitches that could not have been discovered without a public release, and a few dozen people testing the ROM. One thing in the background, that is never seen, is the number of hours spent just flashing our phones (I am NOT counting the cooking process) with numerous revisions testing all the bugs/issues reported. My Tilt was flashed no less then 1000 times in it's life, and my Fuze has been through over 500 so far.

I consider myself to be a pretty good ROM chef. But I also know that I am far from the best, and that most of my knowledge came from the very large XDA-Developers community. Some ROM chefs do not share information about the inner workings of their ROM in the ROM thread itself, but a simple email/PM will usually get you the information you seek. Look at it this way: If someone uses a ROM as released, and has no desire to modify it, then why should the thread be clogged with hundreds of questions/answers relating to how this was done, or how that was done.

My ROMs are "protected" using RaphaelKitchen, but it wasn't always this way. It has been shown that merging the RGU/DSM files into one large file speeds up the ROM because you now have several hundred less files sitting on the device. In addition, I also release my kitchen, in it's complete form, when I release a new ROM version. People are free to download the kitchen, extract it to their computer, and fully customize my ROMs. I know this is a popular route, because my Fuze and Touch Pro kitchens have been downloaded over 100 times since v4.7 of my ROM came out last month.

On to donations... I have a donation link in my signature for people who wish to appreciate the amount of work/hours poured into creating custom WM ROMs. Just as my signature says, I never require monetary compensation, but I also accept whatever people give, because it allows me to improve my work. For example, I purchased WinCE CAB Creator with some of my donations, so that I could create CAB files of items removed from the ROM. I also maintain a Rapidshare Premium account so that I never have to delete any file uploaded to XDA. Another form of donation I received was web hosting on a fast server that provided an alternative to Rapidshare.

I've said all of this before, but it's been awhile, and I cannot find the post. In closing, I don't see anything wrong with the items you pointed out. We've had issues in the past with members who used donations as a way to obtain a piece of software (ROM or otherwise), and as soon as it was brought to our attention, it was dealt with.