[okfn-discuss] Procedure for Proposing a new Project

Mon Jul 12 21:07:42 UTC 2010

dear Rufus, all,

This is great to see, I would add a comment here...

>    2. In your email say (or point to a document saying):
>      * Name/title of the project
>      * 1 or 2 sentence purpose
>      * 1 or 2 paragraph summary
>      * Who is or would be involved. In particular what person(s) would
> be responsible for the project
>      * [optional] What technical requirements you have
>      * [optional] What financial, community or other support (if  
> any) you have
>    3. Once we get your email it will be discussed in the
> [[wg/coord|Coordination Group/Project Committee]] and we'll get back
> to you

It seems important to have some criteria for incubation published here -
to write these would be the job of the members of the coord group.

Here are the OSGeo foundation's criteria, for example.
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Project_Evaluation_Criteria

ASF has a long-winded proposal process, appropriate to its scale and
history (30-40 projects *in incubation alone* at one time - so they are
more selective about things, e.g. insisting that a project already has a
sizeable, active community when it first turns up.)
http://incubator.apache.org/guides/proposal.html

ASF suggests that projects acquire a Champion (someone on the inside and
familiar with the process) before entering it; OSGeo requires someone on
the Incubation Committee to be a project's mentor once they are accepted.

The Coord group would be responsible for setting the right balance -
welcoming new projects while keeping a high bar for quality and
sustainability.

The criteria would not be *binding*, it would still be possible to
reject a project that met them for other outlying reasons as long as
their reasons were clear. For example, OKF once turned down an approach
from an interesting corporate/government social network mapping project,
on the grounds that it would be a libel magnet, and a UK based
organisation is very poorly positioned to deal with legal consequences
of libel. OSGeo once turned down a project which had most of the
"desirable traits" because it was a fork by one of the founders of
another Foundation project, there was a risk of exacerbating bad
feeling, it was decided to postpone until things had calmed down and the
fork had demonstrated some impact.

So, clarity about the criteria which projects will be judged by, would
help people to use their time well, and mute contentious chat.

be well,

jo
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