[Incubator] Project Status Template

[Frank Warmerdam]

Paul,

My answers are my opinions.   Most of this has not been set in stone yet.

Paul Spencer wrote:
> Will a project that is entering incubation automatically start using the 
> foundation infrastructure?  

Our working assumption has been that a project in incubation may use
the foundation infrastructure while in incubation.

 > Is there a go/no-go decision on projects in
> the incubator or does acceptance into the incubator imply eventual 
> graduation from the incubator?

There is an accept/defer/reject decision made on graduating from the
incubator to being a full project.  This decision is ultimately made
by the board of directors, but based on a recommendation from the
incubation committee.

Normally a motivated project that gets accepted into incubation
should expect to be able to graduate from incubation unless some
insurmountable problem (like, all the code was stolen from Microsoft
or something) is encountered.  However, we, the incubation committee,
may end up holding a project in incubation for substantial work.

As yet, it is quite unclear how high a bar we expect to set at the
end of incubation.  I think it would at least require a clean bill of
health for the code audit, and a functioning PSC.

> I noticed in the Apache stuff that they have a special area set aside 
> for this kind of stuff as the project is not yet officially part of 
> Apache as they do not officially recognize incubation projects as part 
> of Apache for a variety of (supposedly valid) reasons.  Do we have the 
> same set of concerns as Apache?

A project in incubation (possibly excepting the initial eight projects)
should not identify itself as being a full fledged project of the foundation
until after it has passed incubation.  I'm not sure if we will want to
impose some specific requirements to make this distinction clear to the
world in general.

In the Apache incubator they also have rules restricting code releases
without approval and stuff like that.  I definately think that would be
inappropriate in our case.

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGF, http://osgeo.org