Seems like a nice idea but choosing recipients based on popularity is not going to reach the most deserving. Of the nominees, they should cut it down to those who are doing open source as a spare time hobby. Preferably those who have maintained some unfashionable, boring seeming infrastructure project for the past couple of decades. Of the names that are familiar to me on the nominee list, all are the type of people that are adept enough at self-promotion to be well paid anyway.
Pick the number 2 or 3 developer on small team projects rather than the well-known charismatic founder. For a pure one-man project it is a lot easier to solicit donations because there's no need to divide up the spoils. Many projects are small teams, only the biggest create foundations an have the capacity to have actual assets.
I've been one of the people hand summarizing these descriptions, so thank you for saying that. It's been a lot of work but I want to make sure everyone gets a good description of what they're working on!
Pick the number 2 or 3 developer on small team projects rather than the well-known charismatic founder. For a pure one-man project it is a lot easier to solicit donations because there's no need to divide up the spoils. Many projects are small teams, only the biggest create foundations an have the capacity to have actual assets.