MOSS incubation overview

Responsibility	MOSS	Website Listing	OSGeo Community	OSGeo Project
Geospatial - README or project description	YES	X	X	X
Geospatial - User guide or quickstart		YES (from 1987)	X	X
Free or Open Source License - See LICENSE.md	YES: Free	X	X	X
Free or Open Source License - Check headers	YES: Public Domain (headers ?)		X	X
Free or Open Source License - Providence Review	YES: Public Domain (MOSS came first)			X
Participatory - See CONTRIBUTING.md	YES (github OSGeo/MOSS)	X	X	X
Participatory - History of pull requests or patches	YES (github OSGeo/MOSS)		X	X
Participatory - Code of conduct	TBD		X	X
Open Community - communication channel - decision making process	YES: Mailing list			X
Active Healthy Community - user and developer collaboration - long term viability		YES + YES: Maintainer team (since 2020), Open Access Publication (DOI/Zenodo)		X
Development Process - version control - issue tracker - leadership open to new members - transparent decision making	YES: Version Control, open to new members, transparency, no issue tracker (yet)			X
Documentation - user documentation - developer documentation	YES (user + dev documentation from 1987 and older)			X
Release Procedure - release process - documented testing process	YES (from 1987)			X
Foundation Resources	Website Listing	OSGeo Community	OSGeo Project
website project list	YES: MOSSGIS.org, MOSS.osgeo,org: pending	X	X	X
website choose-a-project	TBD ???	X	X	X
OSGeo Live	not yet	X	X	X
Marketing Collateral	TBD		X	X
Representation	TBD			project officer
infrastructure and facilities	???		X	X
promotion & marketing	???		X	X
budget	TBD		osgeo board	project budget
fundraising	TBD (no need)		X	X

Branding

Community	Project

Step 1: Add OSGeo Website Project Page

To be listed on the OSGeo website:

1. Be geospatial
   • Confirm by checking README or project description
2. Have a free license or open source license
   • The license must be OSI approved
3. Welcome participation and new contributors.
   • We look for a clear contribution policy

If you have questions about the above, or would like guidance on setting up your open source project, please reach out to us.

Step 2: Join Community Projects Program

Projects applying to the *OSGeo Community* program are asked to:

1. Be geospatial
   • Confirm by checking README or project description
   • project page on the osgeo website
   • We ask projects have some user documentation, for example an OSGeo Live quickstart
2. Have a free license or an open source license.
   • The license must be OSI approved
   • We ask that the project team check the file headers and double check the license has been appropriately applied
3. Welcome participation and new contributors.
   • We look for a clear contribution policy
   • We ask that the project demonstrate collaboration, perhaps with a history of bug report or pull requests
   • Projects are required to have a code of conduct

OSGeo provides code of conduct guidance, many projects selecting contribution covenant).

OSGeo Community Projects can take part in the incubation committee for guidance on open source use, setting up project governance, promoting the project, and building the project community. We look forward to working with you.

Step 3: Incubation process and Graduation

The *OSGeo Project* designation is intended to recognize established projects with a diverse community of developers and users with a proven track record.

To be recognized as an *OSGeo Project* a project team applies for the OSGeo incubation program. Successful projects are teamed up with an experienced open source mentor to help answer questions, obtain legal council, and help guide work on transparency and community development as required.

Although incubation is a lot of work, this is opportunity for project teams to grow and improve and be publicly recognized for their accomplishment.

To be recognized as an *OSGeo Project* we ask that project teams excel in each of areas mentioned above, see graduation checklist or the comparison table on this page for more detail.

The OSGeo incubation process takes place in three stages:

1. Initial Application
   1. Application request
   2. Mentor volunteer
2. Incubator
   1. Project Status: project details, and a few resourcing questions for the system admin committee (see Project Status Template).
   2. Provenance Review: project team check to ensure the project is open source and has permission to distribute its source code.
   3. Project team and mentor work on graduation checklist priorities
3. Graduation
   1. Mentor recommends project for graduation with motion to the incubation committee
   2. Committee chair informs the OSGeo board, who appoints the project team as a newly formed OSGeo committee

Documents

• Official incubator public web page is at: https://www.osgeo.org/about/committees/incubation/ (with members list).
• OSGeo_Community_Projects
• Incubation FAQ
• Official_IncCom_Documents
• Incubation process docs: https://www.osgeo.org/about/committees/incubation/incubation-process/ (original wiki draft documents)
• Incubation Badges

Draft or discussion documents

• Draft Commiter Responsibilities Guidelines
• Draft 5-star-rating - discussion about more fine incubation procedure
• OSGeo Distribution and Committer [licenses which can be used as is, or as an example for projects starting off with participatory open source.
  • Geotools Copyright Assignment (pdf, odt) - previous example
  • Project Copyright Assignment - previous example
• Contributor Agreement and FAQ
• Incubation Phases proposal