Create CONTRIBUTOR_LADDER.md #4120

nick-adkins · 2025-08-21T21:35:21Z

Second attempt at adding contributor ladder. Closing previous PR #4006 to maintain clarity.

Related Issue #2250

Description

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Test, docs, adr added or updated as needed
Contributor Guide Steps followed

Second attempt at adding contributor ladder. Closing previous PR #4006 to maintain clarity. ## Related Issue #2250 Signed-off-by: nick-adkins <nick@defenseunicorns.com>

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brandtkeller

Documenting maintainer requirements for posterity

brandtkeller · 2025-08-21T21:59:16Z

CONTRIBUTOR_LADDER.md

+
+**Defined by:** Member of the Zarf GitHub ["Maintainer" team](https://github.com/orgs/zarf-dev/teams/maintainers).
+
+#### Responsibilities


I would be curious about removing the Pre-requisites section and rather leaning into Responsibilities as a "Demonstrates meeting the responsibilities of a maintainer"

brainstorming potential requirements:

## Quantitative 1. Contribution History - sustained contribution over time (typically 6-12 months and some number of significant PRs) 2. Issue Triage - Reviewed, Closed or managed responsibly 3. Code Review - healthy balance of submitted reviews to submitted PRs 4. Camp Cleanliness - generally leaves the state cleaner than before 5. Responsiveness - responds to PRs and issues in a timely manner ## Qualitative 1. Technical Judgement - demonstrates a deep understanding of the project 2. Communication - respectful and constructive in reviews and discussions 3. Initiative - takes ownership of the project and actively participates 4. Reliability - consistent and transparent about bandwidth and limitations 5. Decision Making - makes good decisions about the project and its direction

Qualitative

Contribution History - sustained contribution over time (typically 6-12 months and some number of significant PRs)

Added to pre-reqs; refined to 12-month time period & 10 PRs.

Issue Triage - Reviewed, Closed or managed responsibly.

Added to responsibilities: Issue Triage; added quantities; added 10x issues/week

Code Review - healthy balance of submitted reviews to submitted PRs

Added to responsibilities: Project control quality; added 1:1 ratio

Camp Cleanliness - generally leaves the state cleaner than before

Added to B. - how to quantify?

Responsiveness - responds to PRs and issues in a timely manner

Adjusted E. - how to set achievable goals?

Quantitative

Technical Judgement - demonstrates a deep understanding of the project

Adjusted A.

Communication - respectful and constructive in reviews and discussions

These are general expectations for all members of the project. Need to state in "Community Members" responsibilities or is it adequately subsumed under OpenSSF expectations?

Initiative - takes ownership of the project and actively participates

Moved to responsibilities "C"

Reliability - consistent and transparent about bandwidth and limitations

Moved to responsibilities "D"

Decision Making - makes good decisions about the project and its direction

adequately covered under "A"?

New Draft:

#### Responsibilities - A. Technical Judgement - Demonstrate a deep understanding of the project and sound technical judgment - B. [From Brainstorming] Camp Cleanliness - generally leave the state cleaner than before [Added - possible to quantify?] - C. [From Brainstorming] Initiative - take ownership of the project and actively participate - C1. Participate in OpenSSF or Zarf-specific community meetings, if possible - C2. Facilitate Zarf-specific community meetings, if possible - C3. Mentor contributors and reviewers - D. [From Brainstorming] Reliable - consistent and transparent about bandwidth and limitations - E. [From Brainstorming] Responsive - respond to PRs and issues in a timely manner. [Set quantitative goals?] - F. Quality Control - Maintain project quality control via code reviews - F1. [From brainstorming] Maintain healthy balance (~1:1) of submitted reviews to submitted PRs to enable project code collaboration - F2. Approve and merge code contributions as appropriate [Moved from Responsibilities "E"] - G. [From Brainstorming] Issue Triage - Responsibly review, close, or manage issues in the backlog: minimum 10x issues per week #### Pre-requisites - I. [From Brainstorming] Demonstrates the principles and responsibilities required for qualitative Maintainer Responsibilities - I. [From Brainstorming] Sustained contribution history over 12 month time period and 10+ significant PRs. - II. Reviewer for at least 1 month - III. Reviewed at least 10 substantial PRs to the codebase - IV. Reviewed or got at least 30 PRs merged to the codebase

The bullet numbering (e.g., "1", "B", "III", "IV") will be removed in final version. Added them in here to facilitate referencing.

Updated the new draft to get rid of qualitative vs quantitative breakouts.

nick-adkins

Added responses

soltysh

A few minor nits, but in general this looks great!

soltysh · 2025-08-26T14:12:50Z

CONTRIBUTOR_LADDER.md

+
+#### Responsibilities
+
+- Keep participating!


Short on to the point 😉

CONTRIBUTOR_LADDER.md

soltysh · 2025-08-26T14:14:43Z

CONTRIBUTOR_LADDER.md

+
+#### Privileges
+
+- Tests run against their PRs automatically


Do we know this is true with gh actions? Also again PR => pull requests

CONTRIBUTOR_LADDER.md

soltysh · 2025-08-26T14:17:03Z

CONTRIBUTOR_LADDER.md

+
+#### Prerequisites
+
+- Enabled two-factor authentication on their GitHub account


let's make it easy to understand what it means, link to https://help.github.com/articles/about-two-factor-authentication

CONTRIBUTOR_LADDER.md

soltysh · 2025-08-26T14:20:16Z

CONTRIBUTOR_LADDER.md

+- Have made contributions to the project in the form of:
+  - Authoring or reviewing PRs on GitHub. At least one PR must be **merged**.
+  - Filing or commenting on issues on GitHub
+  - Contributing to a project, or community discussions (e.g. meetings, Slack,


Same here, maybe adding a "meaningful contribution" or someting along the lines that is both vague but also open ended, in general something that will allow us to filter out any kind of 👍's and similar

Co-authored-by: Maciej Szulik <maciej@defenseunicorns.com> Signed-off-by: nick-adkins <nick@defenseunicorns.com>

Signed-off-by: nick-adkins <nick@defenseunicorns.com>

mkcp

This is great, looking forward to adding this to our project

mkcp · 2025-08-27T20:49:34Z

CONTRIBUTOR_LADDER.md

+It also defines the process by which users can request to change roles.  These roles are progressive, in that responsibilites and pre-requisites apply to subsequent rungs in the ladder.
+
+- [Roles](#roles)
+  - [Community Participants](#community-participants)


nit: updating #heading-links to match headers

mkcp · 2025-08-27T20:50:43Z

CONTRIBUTOR_LADDER.md

+
+- [Roles](#roles)
+  - [Community Participants](#community-participants)
+  - [Contributors](#contributors)


nit: add Community Members header

mkcp · 2025-08-27T20:51:43Z

CONTRIBUTOR_LADDER.md

+
+#### Prerequisites
+
+Experience as a Community Member for at least 6 months


nit: match bullet format of other prereq sections -

CONTRIBUTOR_LADDER.md

Updated based on comments/feedback/suggestions Signed-off-by: nick-adkins <nick@defenseunicorns.com>

nick-adkins

Made changes based on feedback/suggestions.

soltysh

lgtm

mkcp

LGTM!

Create CONTRIBUTOR_LADDER.md

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Second attempt at adding contributor ladder. Closing previous PR #4006 to maintain clarity. ## Related Issue #2250 Signed-off-by: nick-adkins <nick@defenseunicorns.com>

nick-adkins requested review from a team as code owners August 21, 2025 21:35

nick-adkins mentioned this pull request Aug 21, 2025

contributor-ladder #4006

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nick-adkins and others added 4 commits August 27, 2025 13:03

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Co-authored-by: Maciej Szulik <maciej@defenseunicorns.com> Signed-off-by: nick-adkins <nick@defenseunicorns.com>

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Co-authored-by: Maciej Szulik <maciej@defenseunicorns.com> Signed-off-by: nick-adkins <nick@defenseunicorns.com>

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Co-authored-by: Maciej Szulik <maciej@defenseunicorns.com> Signed-off-by: nick-adkins <nick@defenseunicorns.com>

Update CONTRIBUTOR_LADDER.md

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Signed-off-by: nick-adkins <nick@defenseunicorns.com>

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Update CONTRIBUTOR_LADDER.md

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Updated based on comments/feedback/suggestions Signed-off-by: nick-adkins <nick@defenseunicorns.com>

nick-adkins commented Sep 2, 2025

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soltysh approved these changes Sep 3, 2025

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mkcp approved these changes Sep 3, 2025

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mkcp added this pull request to the merge queue Sep 3, 2025

Merged via the queue into main with commit 9f8994d Sep 3, 2025
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mkcp deleted the nick-adkins-contributor-ladder-2 branch September 3, 2025 20:45


		Defined by: Member of the Zarf GitHub ["Maintainer" team](https://github.com/orgs/zarf-dev/teams/maintainers).

		#### Responsibilities


		#### Prerequisites

		- Enabled two-factor authentication on their GitHub account


		#### Prerequisites

		Experience as a Community Member for at least 6 months

Create CONTRIBUTOR_LADDER.md #4120

Create CONTRIBUTOR_LADDER.md #4120

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nick-adkins commented Aug 21, 2025

Related Issue #2250

Description

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