The Tabbycat Debate Association (“TDA”) seeks to incentivize the development of our software and community through monetary compensation for entities who contribute to the development, technical or otherwise, of Tabbycat and associated projects (“Tabbycat”).

Scope

We compensate contributors for work done in furtherance of projects supported by the TDA, which can take these forms:

Software development to projects under the TabbycatDebate GitHub organization name
Development of open-source projects to extend Tabbycat
Responsible disclosure of software vulnerabilities from Tabbycat
Creation or development of documentation relating to Tabbycat
Contribution to educational material relating to Tabbycat
Maintenance of projects under the TDA’s purview
Incidental costs to the realization of work in the aforementioned points
Other work as approved by the board of the TDA

We may continue to compensate persons who have made major and sustained contributions to projects supported by the TDA for their earlier work, including but not limited to in recognition of cases where such work was not compensated at the time.

Payment

There is no set amount that can be reclaimed for work performed nor unit of work on which compensation can be based. The requester will either respond to an offer of compensation or suggest an amount.The requester should, where appropriate, provide documentation of work done, which may include but is not limited to:

Links to commits, pull requests or issues to Tabbycat
Receipts for fees related to work in scope

The board of the TDA will approve the request, approve it with a different payment amount, or decline the request. The board may take into account any considerations it considers relevant, including but not limited to the following:

Quality of the work
Quantity of the work
Applicability of the work
The requester’s expenditures
The requester’s prior contributions
The amount asked for
The available funds

The TDA does not have “editorial” control over Tabbycat, and so no determination is made on the relevance of software development work done, provided it has been incorporated into the codebase.

Contributors retain ownership of their intellectual property, but agree to be bound by the licence of Tabbycat and allow subsequent modifications to their work and the licence.

Methods

The TDA will review requests on at least a monthly basis, but payment can be made earlier for exigent circumstances. Payment can be made through PayPal or bank transfer where possible. The main currency used is the Canadian dollar (CAD), but other currencies may be available if requested.

The recipient of any funds assumes fees associated with the payment and their tax liabilities.

We will make information about the requests and payments public on an internet-based platform (currently Open Collective), except for private information. Please contact contact@tabbycat-debate.org for the handling of sensitive or confidential information.

Policy in Google Doc