Incubation FAQ

This is an informal FAQ mostly drawn from conversations on the committee email list where we help projects through the OSGeo incubation process.

About Incubation

Q: What is incubation

Incubation in a process used to add projects to the Open Source Geospaital foundation. It is design as a quick safety check prior to a project being recognised as part of the foundation.

For more details see the main web page: http://www.osgeo.org/incubator

Q: Why have a mentor

The Incubation Committee committee asks for a mentor to assist each project through incubation for a number of reasons.

A: Outreach

We are making available a member of the committee on your developer email list as an out reach effort to your community. It is often easier to have discussions (on open source basics, or incubation checks) on the project email where everyone is comfortable

A: Privacy

Not all questions are suitable for public discussion. The incubation process can touch on a few subjects that should be handled with care (such as code ownership, code distribution, license questions and so forth). Having a mentor to talk (and arrange suitable help) can be very useful to collection the required information to continue.

Projects

Q: What about long term viability?

A: The incubation process really wants to check that a project is not going to suddenly disappear:

• That a project has a high bus number and will not suddenly end if a central key developer leaves or is no longer available
• That a project draws on several organisations (and thus sources of funding) for its health and well being

Q: What about existing projects

Incubation is a dynamic process reflecting the needs of the foundation today (in 2006 the foundation offering subversion hosting was seen as very important; in 2012 help balancing project procedures with the "fork me" style of development promoted by git is being wrestled with). The incubation process and checklists are updated to reflect these changes and are adjusted as the foundation priorities change.

Existing projects are not expected revisit the incubation process they are answerable directly to the board via a "project officer". If the board requires any additional information or policy change suitable arrangements can be made.