How hard is it, really, to get a pull request merged into the projects you love? Measured with Greenlight, updated from live GitHub data.
Measured with GreenlightWelcoming means the project has few formal barriers and merges outside work. Mixed means there are real rules (claim first, CLA, assignment) but they are spelled out and the path works. Hard going means expect real resistance. Gated means a hard barrier was found: outside PRs paused, maintainer-only contributions, or a vouch requirement.
Outside merge share is the fraction of recent merged PRs that came from non-collaborators. Median merge time is how long those merges took. Both come from the project's recent history, not its promises.
Field notes are from a real contributor campaign: issues claimed, PRs opened, bots and policies met face to face.
Each row was measured by Greenlight's friction command, which reads the project's CONTRIBUTING files, workflows, claim and assignment rules, and starter-issue supply, then computes a score from 0 to 100 (100 is easiest). Merge velocity comes from recent merged pull requests via the GitHub API. Every row shows its measurement date.
A low score is information, not an insult. Gated projects often have good reasons (spam, AI-generated PR floods, legal requirements), and several of the best-maintained projects here score low precisely because they protect their review bandwidth.