We've had a fair amount of nominations for the Slashdot 2000 Beanie Awards, but we'd love to get more, so head over to the nomination booth. For those who missed our initial release, Andover and Slashdot will be giving away $100,000 to deserving Open Source people and projects at LinuxWorld. Nominations end this Friday, with voting starting on Monday. Check out initial story for more details, or the discussion boards for the conversation.

So to kick off the new year, Andover.Net decided that we ought to give away a lot of money. We're excited to announce the 2000 Slashdot Beanie Awards. No, we're not giving away 2000 beanies, but we are giving away prizes ranging from $30k for Most Improved Open Source Project to $10k awards for things like Unsung Hero and Best Community Advocate. You can read the awards index, where you can also discuss the categories as well as place your nominations. Or you can read on to see a list of awards and a description of the nomination and voting process.

The grand prize Slashdot 2000 Beanie Award is Most Improved Open Source Project. Nominations are open for 2 weeks, and you're welcome to talk about your choices. Good luck.

So often the kernel gets all the credit. We decided to be a little pickier and have people vote for the most improved module in the Linux kernel. A driver you really like? Support for that really cool piece of hardware? Or maybe you just really think that bob.o has just some of the prettiest hacks your eyes have seen in it. Regardless, vote away.

Is it some guy on IRC? Maybe some guy who answers the easy questions on a website somewhere. Regardless, being a newbie helper is a tough task. Lord knows I don't have the patience to do it, but someone does. Who is it? Nominate them!

This one is a bit easier... there really aren't very many charities in the Open Source and Free Software world, but this category is for them. You just have to be a non-profit organization that has contributed to the Open Source (or in this case perhaps Free Software ;) movement.

A few names always tend to crop up in a discussion of this nature. The advocates are the people who spread the message of Open Source outside of just the guys who read Slashdot and freshmeat obsessively. Who does it the best? Nominate the person you feel deserves it most.

As we all know, there are certain people who have achieved a lot of fame in the Open Source world. This award isn't for them. This award is designed to put ten grand into the pocket of someone who has contributed to the open source movement in a significant way but has never gotten the spotlight that they deserve. Talk about it. And Nominate the person who deserves it most.

What is on your desktop that soothes your tired eyes? A background image? A really pretty skinned application? A webcam of some girl that you obsessively reload every 60 seconds from the moment you sit at your desk until the moment you pass out? (If it's the last one, you might consider taking some sort of medication before she gets a restraining order against you.) If it's something else, why not try nominating them for their own Beanie Award?

Nobody loves a good old fashioned vi/emacs war more than me, so we decided to create a category in the Slashdot 2000 Beanies just as an excuse to have a flamewar! Nominate your favorite text editor, and let the good times roll.

Apache always seems to be pointed out as the definitive Open Source application. This award is for the best open source module for Apache. Is it a scripting language? An encryption extension? Nominate the module that you think adds the best feature to the most popular web server on the Internet.

Have you found a graphical program that you picked up with ease? Or is there a program that looks smart, but more importantly has an interface that lets you get work done? Hint: There's another category for non-graphical applications, so nominating the CLI doesn't count. (And please don't nominate that annonying paper clip.)

Remember twm and its amazing level of customizability? Window Managers have made great strides since then! An entire new crop of "Themes" has popped up to make sure that those of us with the design sense of a gnat still have desktops that make our coworkers drool and ask us what operating system we're running. This category is for the theme you think looks the coolest. Nominate Away!

Any perl hacker will tell you that CPAN is where its at. Its like having God's toolbox available to you, with all the hammers and nails you need to practice all the princibles of good perl programming (my favorite is laziness)! This award goes to the perl module that you couldn't live without. Or maybe its just a super sweet hack. Whatever, if its in CPAN, its eligible... its just up to you to nominate it.

Is there a set of sounds that you've carefully matched to your every move in X? Or is there an album you believe personifies your computing experience? Or perhaps you firmly believe that having CowboyNeal making beat-box sounds in your ears is just what you need. If your answer is the last of those three, than you should try to deafen yourself. Otherwise, head over to the nomination area and show where your ear is aligned.

As you've probably noticed, we do a lot of book reviews here at Slashdot. But what book do you think deserves the Beanie award? A book on programming? Social Commentary? O'Reilly and Associates? *grin* You can nominate your favorite book - and check out our book reviews for help if you need it.

Do you disagree with our categories? Think that some deserving soul is being passed over? Or you think that you deserve $2,000? Well, this is the catch-all bin of the awards - so head over to the nomination booth and let your voice be heard.

Hey! We're Unix junkies, right? That whole mouse thing is just a fad anyway. The CLI is more efficient for a lot of things... and a good ncurses app is gonna run a heckuva lot faster than, say, Netscape. So this is your chance to nominate the non-graphical application you love most. The one with the interface that you wouldn't trade in for all the bloated graphics and icons in the world.

So for kicks we've decided to create a few categories just for fun. The prizes are less serious: A Beanie and a hug from our own CowboyNeal. We've got several categories that you can Nominate in. This first batch is related to Slashdot:

• Favorite Slashdot Comment Poster
• Favorite Slashdot Author
• Favorite Slashdot Story of 1999
• The Hemos Award (Only Hemos is Eligible)

Here's the categories for the other half of the 'Why the hell Not' awards...

• Best Dressed
• Big Dumb Patent Bully
• Big Dumb Domain Name Bully
• The Cluestick Award for FUD in Journalism