OpenWork whitepaper

Reference for the openwork framework. Offer bounties for collaborative effort online and find paid work on GitHub and collaborative platforms ⚙️OpenWork [] [] [] []

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🌍 What is OpenWork

OpenWork defines a simple, open, and universal method to:

• Offer monetary rewards (bounties) for work on issues, features, bugs, or project contributions.
• Make bounties visible, searchable, and transparent using GitHub-native tools (labels, badges, templates).
• Help developers discover paid work across GitHub with zero barriers.

OpenWork is a reference for requesting collaborative effort GitHub enabling individuals, teams, and organizations to fund collaborative work, and for developers to find paid opportunities across open projects. A place to discuss payment mechanics and expectations, to be all aligned

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📜 How to use it

1. Put the badge in your project page

   • OpenWork: This project uses OpenWork ⚙️OpenWork This lets humans know you look for collaboration.

2. How is work paid off?

   • Offer a reward for someone to do some work, respecting the OpenWork guidelines
   • Someone does the work for you and posts proof of its work, either with a picture or submitting an edit to a file.
   • The worker now shares its payment details with the requester, which pays what's due on acceptance and posts a closure

3. Add Visual Badges and Labels to Issues (Optional)

   • 💰 Bounty: $<amount> — specifies the bounty amount.
   • 🏷️ Type: <Bug | Feature | Management | Research> — describes the type of work.
   • 💸 Payment: <Method> — outlines payment method (PayPal, Wire, Crypto, Invoice, Other).
   • ⚡ Urgency: <Low | Medium | High> — indicates task priority.
   • Use Shields.io or similar to create bounty badges for higher visibility.

4. Standardize Issue Templates as much as possible Each bounty issue should clearly state these info with the aim of being more searchable from the top bar:

   • Amount offered
   • Payment method
   • Task description
   • Conditions for acceptance
   • Contact information

5. Comment and propose changes

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Example

Look at this issue as an example

🏅 Example Badges

The usage of badges gives more visibility to the idea and badges to make your bounties highly visible.
Here are some examples:

OpenWork [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] []

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📝 Badge syntax: how to create your own badges and offer work

You can quickly generate custom badges to request collaborative effort by using Shields.io.
Example URL structure:

https://img.shields.io/badge/<LABEL>-<MESSAGE>-<COLOR> (https://github.com/subastation/openwork)

[OpenWork](https://github.com/subastation/openwork)
[![Bounty $100](https://img.shields.io/badge/Bounty-%24100-yellow)]
[![Bounty $500](https://img.shields.io/badge/Bounty-%24500-gold)]
[![Payment Invoice](https://img.shields.io/badge/Payment-Invoice-blue)]
[![Payment BankTransfer](https://img.shields.io/badge/Payment-BankTransfer-lightblue)]
[![Payment Cash](https://img.shields.io/badge/Payment-Cash-green)]
[![Urgency High](https://img.shields.io/badge/Urgency-High-red)]
[![Urgency Medium](https://img.shields.io/badge/Urgency-Medium-yellow)]
[![Type CreativeInput](https://img.shields.io/badge/Type-CreativeInput-lightblue)]
[![Type Feature](https://img.shields.io/badge/Type-Feature-brightgreen)]
[![Type Bug Fix](https://img.shields.io/badge/Type-Bug%20Fix-red)]

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🔎 Finding Paid Work (Search Examples)

Developers can find work by cross-referencing characteristics in the GitHub search bar or on search engines :

label:"Bounty" and 

is:issue label:"Bounty"

label:"Bounty" and type:CreativeInput