I understand that they have a lot of volunteers and it isn't easy to get a consensus. Maybe they should have thought of that first? Or perhaps just make a decision and let it be known it would be happening in X period of time that unless there was significant outrage that they were going to do X? Even if they were never going to cash out of the deal, they could have used it to pay other bounties to get work done. Or sit on all that money until it evaporates.
"but we did not want to get paid for working on a passion project" If they didn't want the cash in the first place they could have put it towards something else open source. Plus they are complaining about not getting paid while saying they didn't want to get paid. This would scare away anyone wanting to help if they are going to go about things this way, but I don't know because apparently I didn't read the article.