There are things called restricted funds in the donation world, but me not being a lawyer, I really don't know if it qualifies with these donations or not, I'd guess it does since there was always a specific purpose that people were donating towards.
It's unfortunate that so much was paid for nothing and developers like @PowerGlove was working for free.
It is unfortunate, but at some point you have to say enough is enough. There definitely had been development happening for what was being paid out, but (imo) after experiencing epochtalk myself back in ~2020, and with the recent live demo, it didn't feel like it would ever make it to the standards of being the official forum software at bitcointalk.
And PG did eventually start getting paid:
I'd like to correct a misconception that I keep bumping into before it becomes too widespread:
While most of the patches I've posted to date were done on a free-time/voluntary basis, theymos and I did recently come to an arrangement, and I am now paid for the work I do on Bitcointalk.