General Principles of Incubation

Purpose of Incubation
The purpose of the OSGeo incubation process is to ensure that projects that are officially part of OSGeo:


 * 1 . have a successfully operating open and collaborative development community. Ref: Project_Graduation_Checklist
 * 2 . have clear IP oversight of the code base of the project. Ref: Project_Graduation_Checklist
 * 3 . adopt the OSGeo principles and operating principles. Ref:
 * 4 . are mentored through the incubation process.

Principles of OSGeo Projects (The OSGeo Way)

 * 5 . Projects should manage themselves, striving for consensus and encouraging participation from all contributors - from beginning users to advanced developers. Ref: Project_Graduation_Checklist
 * 6 . Contributors are the scarce resource and successful projects court and encourage them. Ref: Project_Graduation_Checklist
 * 7 . Projects are encouraged to adopt open standards and collaborate with other OSGeo projects. Ref: Project_Graduation_Checklist . TBD: Missing link to Open Standards in Project Graduation Checklist.
 * 8 . Projects are responsible for reviewing and controlling their code bases to insure the integrity of the open source baselines. Ref: Project_Graduation_Checklist

Operating Principles

 * 9 . Projects should document how they manage themselves. Ref: Project_Graduation_Checklist
 * 10 . Projects should maintain developer and user documentation. Ref: Project_Graduation_Checklist
 * 11 . Projects should maintain a source code management system. Ref: Project_Graduation_Checklist
 * 12 . Projects should maintain a discrepancy tracking system. Ref: Project_Graduation_Checklist
 * 13 . Projects should maintain project mailing lists. Ref: Project_Graduation_Checklist
 * 14 . Projects should actively promote their participation in OSGeo. Ref: Project_Graduation_Checklist
 * 15 . Projects are encouraged to adopt OSGeo look and feel, branding, logos on their project sites. Ref: Project_Graduation_Checklist
 * 16 . Projects are encouraged to participate in OSGeo standardization efforts to present a common interface for OSGeo visitors and members. TBD: Missing from Project Graduation Checklist.
 * 17 . Projects should have automated build and smoke test systems. Ref: Project_Graduation_Checklist