Membership¶
Our website has a list of the contributors to the OpenWorm project. Contributors who make regular contributions to the project are considered core members. This page explains the process by which a person becomes a contributor and how a contributor becomes a core member.
Privileges of core members¶
- Core members can nominate contributors for core membership
- Core members vote to approve new member nomination (majority wins)
- Core members may vote on decisions during meetings
Qualify as core team¶
- Qualify as contributor
- Attend at least 4 hangouts over a period of 3 months
- Hangouts can be the general or any other regular hangout conducting OpenWorm work
- Have a GitHub account
- Has been providing regular contributions for at least 3 months
Stay on core team¶
- Core members can be removed if there is silence for two months
Qualify as a contributor¶
- Add at least one meaningful contribution of code or data that fits into an OpenWorm goal into one of the OpenWorm repositories (GitHub, Google Drive, DropBox, etc.)
OR
- Add organizational support to the goals of OpenWorm
Stay on as contributor¶
- Once you are a contributor, you are a contributor forever
Hangouts invite criteria¶
- Everybody who is a contributor gains the privilege to join the hangouts so that they can gain core team membership if they want
Relationship to the L0–L5 contributor model¶
This page describes OpenWorm's historical, currently-operational membership model: anyone with at least one meaningful contribution is a Contributor; sustained activity for 3+ months earns Core Member status.
OpenWorm is evolving toward a more granular L0–L5 contributor framework with explicit progression criteria and subsystem ownership. Rough mapping between the two models:
| Historical term | Approximate L0–L5 equivalent |
|---|---|
| (interested observer, no PRs yet) | L0 Observer |
| Contributor (one meaningful contribution) | L1 Apprentice / L2 Junior Contributor |
| Core Member (3+ months regular contribution, attends hangouts) | L3 Contributor / L4 Senior Contributor |
| (steering, sets project direction) | L5 Founder |
The historical Contributor / Core Member terms remain valid; the L0–L5 framework adds finer-grained levels and explicit advancement criteria as the project scales.