Contribution, incentives & paid work
Applies organization-wide to kcolbchain public repositories. Individual repos may add build and style rules; they should not contradict this without an explicit note.
Read the full policy on GitHub
Summary
- Default: Public OSS via issues and PRs under each repo’s license. Nothing in a public repo is employment or payment unless stated in writing for a specific engagement.
- Bounties: There is no guaranteed org-wide paid bounty program today. A
bountylabel does not promise payment unless that issue states the reward or links to a published policy with numbers. - Recognition: Maintainers may offer discretionary thanks or small stipends—never promised by label alone.
- Deeper work: Sustained contributors may be invited to paid research, partner work, or grant-funded milestones—by fit and contract, not from a single drive-by PR alone.
Contributor ladder
To make “sustained and reliable” concrete, we use three tiers derived from public merged-PR counts across the org. These tiers describe visibility and signal — they do not entitle anyone to payment, and they do not override the bounty or deeper-work sections.
| Tier | Trigger | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Newcomer | 1 merged PR | Listed on the public contributors page; eligible for contributor Telegram. |
| Regular | 2–4 merged PRs | We actively @-mention you on issues in areas you've touched; easier path onto larger PRs. |
| Fellow | 5+ merged PRs | First-invite pool for paid research, partner-org work, and grant milestones when they come up. Invitation is still by fit. |
Tiers are computed daily and published to data/contributor-stats.json. Opt out of the public listing via data/contributors-optout.txt; opting out does not change tier eligibility, only visibility. Fellows are not obligated to take on paid work, and kcolbchain is not obligated to offer it.
Related
- Contributors — live ledger
- Open invitations — help-wanted / good-first-issue across every repo
- Join kcolbchain
- P1 lab fork announcements (how we surface first-party GitHub links on the site)
- Directory