I was curious how they might handle something that isn't ready yet, but in the process of being built. But that answers it, it's not eligible. Oh well :( Plenty of good open source out there deserving as well.
You seem to be mistaking that a startup is a business and an open source project doesn't need to be. One can simply want to build something and give the code away for free because the world benefits far more from that than trying to monetize it as a business and having fewer people use it.
So while this effort is commendable, it will do nothing to help open source projects that are good, but just have not become popular yet.
It makes you wonder how many projects are out there which have tremendous potential but still lack a critical feature or two that a bit of funding would help bring to fruition.
