Incubation Mentor Guidelines

Purpose

The purpose of the Incubation Mentor is to provide advice to the project and to bring an independent assessment of the status of the project back to the IncCom.

Role

An Incubation Mentor is assigned by the IncCom to each project that is accepted into the OSGeo Incubator.

An Incubation Mentor is a member of Incubation Committee that is not associated directly with the project to be mentored.

An Incubation Mentor reports to the Incubation Committee.

Responsibilities

The Incubation Mentor is responsible:

• to the Incubation Committee for:
  • assessing the status of the project on a regular basis
  • reporting to the Incubation Committee on project status on a regular basis
  • making a recommendation to the Incubation Committee about the project (graduation or dismissal(?))

• to the project under incubation for:
  • advising the project on the incubation process
  • identifying all documents the project must complete, and assisting where practical
  • reviewing submitted documents
  • establishing the necessary infrastructure for the project under incubation (wiki, web site, svn/cvs, mailing list) as required
  • (optional) assisting in some of the actual work to be done

Notes

The mentor should be the member of the incubation committee that is expected to do a deep review of the project. This includes:

• Join the various project mailing lists, to assess community health, and answer questions about OSGeo.
• Attend most project meetings.
• Investigate bug database, run software, etc to assess software quality and responsibleness of quality processes.
• Evaluate if the project PSC is really in control of the project, and is operating in a heathy fashion.
• Spot check the code copyright review to see that it reflects reality.

Mentorship is a time consuming process.