What this is, and how it works.

What this is

A free, one-week hackathon for people who build software. The brief is one line: build the free, open-source version of something people would otherwise pay for. One feature of a big product is a fair scope. Every entry has to be open source, in a public GitHub repository.

One week to build, 3 days of voting, winners announced the day after, paid in public. The dates are announced as soon as 100+ builders have joined and the pool holder is confirmed. There is no cap on builders.

Who I am

I'm Ethan Rogers. I've been an entrepreneur for ten years, mostly running marketing and web development agencies, and I was writing code for a living before AI could write it for you. These days I build software that runs on AI agents, and several of my projects are open source.

I'm one of the builders this is for. You can see what I make at ethanplus.ai, on GitHub and on X.

Why I'm doing it

I think AI is making software cheap to build, and that most of it is heading toward open source. If you believe something is valuable, give people the thing itself. If it really is valuable, the demand will show, and a business can still grow from it.

I wanted a hackathon built around that, and run the way I'd want one run as a builder. I'm doing it either way. How big it gets depends on who joins. A hackathon owes its builders a few plain things:

• It should be free to enter, with nothing sold to you once you are in.
• The prize money should be held by someone other than the person running it.
• The rules should be public and fixed before anyone starts building.
• The people who built should be the ones who decide who won, in the open.
• Being disqualified should take a written rule, a published reason and a chance to appeal.

Antipaywall is my attempt to run one that way, and to make each of those things something you can check rather than something you have to take my word for.

What I'm putting in

I've pledged $2,500 to the pool, from my own money. I'm doing the work of bringing in sponsors, and I'm asking them to cover the pool holder's fee, so what people give reaches the pool whole. I take nothing out: no cut, no fee, no salary, no profit.

That money is a pledge today, like anyone else's, because there is nowhere to pay it yet. I pay it when the pool opens.

What I'm asking for

Help. One person can't run this fairly alone, and it isn't worth running without builders. There are five ways in, and the first one costs nothing:

• Follow along. Join the email list. You hear when something real happens: the dates, the pool opening, the results.
• Build. Create your builder account and hold your place. You count toward the 100 or more builders the dates are waiting on.
• Review panel. Sit on the review panel. It will check entries for cheating and nothing else. It never ranks anyone.
• Help organize. Rules, outreach, moderation, and the things one person has not thought of.
• Sponsor. Put money into the pool, or put up a bounty for something specific.

Pick one on the join page.

How it works

Joining

You sign in with GitHub or GitLab. The site reads two things from your profile and shows you each result: your account is at least 30 days old, and your profile shows at least 10 contributions in the last 12 months. Pass both and you can join as a builder. The checks make throwaway accounts more expensive to create. They are not proof of who anyone is, and they run again each time you sign in.

Ideas and hearts

Anyone signed in can post an idea for something that should be free, up to 5 each. When you post one, the site searches GitHub for open-source projects that already do it and asks what they are missing. Anyone can heart an idea, with no account. Hearts show builders what people want. They carry no money and no weight in who wins, and a determined person could inflate them.

The pool, and who holds it

Antipaywall takes nothing: no cut, no fee, no profit. We never hold the money: an independent nonprofit will. Our choice is Open Source Collective, which keeps 10% of each contribution for doing that, and the card processor takes its own fee. We are asking sponsors to cover that 10%, so what people give reaches the pool whole. The holder and its fee are confirmed here before anyone can pay in.

The prize pool is whatever the community and sponsors put in. It is split across nine winners: 30%, 18% and 12% for the top three, 6% each for the next five, and 10% for Community Choice.

Pledges are not payments

Until the pool opens, the only thing anyone can do is pledge: a public promise of an amount. Pledges are listed with the pledger's GitHub or GitLab username and are never counted as money in the pool. A pledge is listed straight away only when it is from an individual, is $1,000 or less, and shows the pledger's own username. Anything else (a company, a larger amount, a different display name, an X account) is checked by a person first. When the pool opens, people who pledged come back and pay.

Sponsor bounties

A sponsor can put up money for the best entry that does one specific thing. The first ones will be listed as sponsors commit. This is how they will be decided:

• The sponsor writes the criteria before the bounty is listed. They cannot be changed afterwards.
• Antipaywall's review panel decides which entries meet those criteria.
• The sponsor picks the winner from the eligible entries, by a deadline set when the bounty is listed.
• If the sponsor does not pick in time, the eligible entry with the most builder votes wins.
• If no entry is eligible, the money goes to the main pool.
• A sponsor cannot withdraw a bounty once it is listed.

The vote

Winners will be chosen by the builders. Everyone who submits an eligible entry will get three votes, for three different projects, none of them their own. Every ballot will be published, so anyone can see who voted for what. Community Choice will be the one prize decided by a wider vote, open to any GitHub or GitLab account that passes the same two checks. Sponsors will get no vote on any prize. I will get no vote on the main prizes, and neither will the review panel.

The review panel and appeals

A panel of named volunteers will check flagged entries and the top ten. It will be able to disqualify an entry only for breaking a written rule, it will have to publish its reasoning, and it will not rank anyone. A disqualified builder will have 72 hours to appeal in public. Applications for the panel are open now, and its members are listed here once they are chosen.

Those of us running it

I plan to build an entry myself, and I'd like the review panel to as well. So the rule is:

• Organizers and review panel members are welcome to build an entry, and encouraged to.
• Their entries are shown with everyone else's and count toward the builders the dates are waiting on.
• Their entries cannot win a prize or a bounty, and are not on the main ballot.
• They do not vote on the main prizes.
• Like anyone whose GitHub or GitLab account passes the two checks, they can vote for Community Choice.

Getting paid

Once the panel has cleared the winners, they will be paid from the pool by its holder, and each payout will be public. If a winner can't be paid, their share goes to the next place.

How you can check it

• The numbers on this site (builders, pledges, hearts, ideas) are counted from its database when the page loads. If they can't be read, the page says so instead of showing a zero. The one exception is sponsors: each sponsor's amount, and whether it is pledged or paid, is entered by me from what that sponsor has committed or paid.
• The rules are published on this site, version 1.0 (November 12, 2026). Every change is listed there with its date, and because this site's code is public, the full history of the page is too.
• The money will sit on a public ledger kept by the holder, showing every contribution and every payout.
• The ballots will be published in full.
• What the site records about you is listed on the privacy page.
• The code that runs this site is public. Read it at github.com/antipaywall/platform.

What's being finalised

• The dates. The dates are announced as soon as 100+ builders have joined and the pool holder is confirmed. There is no cap on builders.
• The pool holder. An independent nonprofit, never Antipaywall or its organizer. Our choice is Open Source Collective, which keeps 10% for that service. It is confirmed here before anyone can pay in.
• The review panel. Applications are open. If you'd do it, apply.
• The rest of the site. Submitting an entry, the checks on entries, voting and payouts get built before build week starts.

What I'm committing to

• It is free to enter, and nothing will be sold to you for entering.
• I take nothing out of it.
• I never hold the pool.
• Nobody is asked to pay anything before the holder, and the fee it charges, is confirmed on this site.
• The rules are public, and every change to them is listed with its date.
• The builders will pick the winners, and every ballot will be published.
• Nobody will be disqualified without a written rule, a published reason and an appeal.
• When something here isn't true yet, the site says so.