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#open.2
2. have clear IP oversight of the code base of the project. Ref: Project_Graduation_Checklist#Copyright_and_License
3. adopt the OSGeo principles and operating principles. Ref: #Operating_Principles
4. are mentored through the incubation process.

5. Projects should manage themselves, striving for consensus and encouraging participation from all contributors - from beginning users to advanced developers. Ref: Project_Graduation_Checklist#open.2
6. Contributors are the scarce resource and successful projects court and encourage them. Ref: Project_Graduation_Checklist#open.2
7. Projects are encouraged to adopt open standards and collaborate with other OSGeo projects. Ref: Project_Graduation_Checklist#Projects . 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#Copyright_and_License

9. Projects should document how they manage themselves. Ref: Project_Graduation_Checklist#processes.3
10. Projects should maintain developer and user documentation. Ref: Project_Graduation_Checklist#Documentation
11. Projects should maintain a source code management system. Ref: Project_Graduation_Checklist#processes.1
12. Projects should maintain a discrepancy tracking system. Ref: Project_Graduation_Checklist#processes.2
13. Projects should maintain project mailing lists. Ref: Project_Graduation_Checklist#processes.2b
14. Projects should actively promote their participation in OSGeo. Ref: Project_Graduation_Checklist#Marketing
15. Projects are encouraged to adopt OSGeo look and feel, branding, logos on their project sites. Ref: Project_Graduation_Checklist#Marketing
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#release.2