Incubation Report 2007

= Incubation Committee =
 * Period covered by report: Jan-Dec 2007
 * Contact name: Frank Warmerdam
 * Members: Frank Warmerdam (chair), Chris Holmes, Robert Bray, Mark Lucas, Cameron Shorter, Steve Lime, Arnulf Christl, Jody Garnett, Markus Neteler, Paul Spencer, Richard Gould, Norman Vine, Daniel Morissette, Howard Butler, Jeroen Ticheler, Julien-Samuel Lacroix

Key Accomplishments
The following projects entered incubation in 2007:
 * gvSIG
 * FDO
 * QGIS
 * GeoNetwork
 * GEOS

The following projects graduated from incubation in 2007:
 * OpenLayers
 * MapGuide Open Source

The following project applications for incubation are pending:
 * GeoMOOSE
 * ORCHESTRA
 * deegree
 * JVNMobileGIS

This year we approved the Project Graduation Checklist.

Work Areas
The committee struggled with several issues this year, and will continue to work on them:
 * What degree of professional legal support should be bringing to the incubation process?
 * What key qualities do we look for in new projects?
 * Is incubation suitable for geodata projects or other kinds of projects that do not meet our normal software project expectations?
 * What support should be be providing to new projects just getting established?
 * How much should a mentor be doing to encourage a project in the incubation process?
 * Should we providing more resources, or applying additional pressure to projects that appear stalled in incubation?

Outlook for 2008
There are several projects that appear close to graduation and we see continued interest by new projects in joining OSGeo through the incubation process.