I cam across this Tweet Is this true?
Real if you are core maintainer of a big open source AI project
The tweet is just for farming engagement and has been given a community note
Real? Yes. But “any repo + 5 min” = hype. It’s a reviewed grant for active maintainers of projects people actually use → the form · terms. Here’s how people actually got in ![]()
╔════════════════════════════╗
║ WHO'S IN vs WHO'S GHOSTED ║
╚════════════════════════════╝
Got it:
- Discourse (Sam Saffron) — accepted overnight · forum
- dbcli/mycli (~11.7k
) — “OpenAI asked for nothing in return” · HN - vLLM — got Codex Security
Ghosted (no reply, months): a 29k
repo · EasyInvoicePDF (900
, applied twice) · FlowMVI (750
)
👉 STARS DON'T DECIDE IT. Being depended-on does.
The cheat code — how to get picked:
- Apply as primary/core maintainer (write access, public repo + profile)
- Pitch = “credits to cut my maintainer grind — PR review, triage, releases, security, all human-checked” — NOT “I want free Pro”
- Flag downloads + who depends on you, not stars
- Below the bar? Form literally allows “apply anyway and explain why” + you can nominate another maintainer
Don’t fake a repo / maintainer status — they verify “repository control” and decisions are final.
Bonus: also hit Anthropic’s Claude for OSS (5k
or 1M downloads, closes Jun 30) — one ghosted-by-OpenAI dev got in there instead.
Simple-pimple: real grant, no star wall — be a genuinely useful maintainer, pitch the workload not the freebie, apply here. ![]()
My OSS was not accepted, but I received $100 in credits as a student.
!