View source for Incubator/Incubation Process

= Incubation Process =

A project going through the incubator will be in one of the following four states:
* candidate
* incubating
* active
* archived

== Candidate ==
* provide description of the project to be incubated
* must include the people committing to the project
* must have a plan to be in compliance with the manifesto
* must be supported by a sponsor which will help during the incubation phase

== Incubating ==
* the sponsor actively works toward getting the project setup:
** make sure the needed infrastructure is provided by the community (lives in our current playground area)
** help grooming the community
** more generally verifies it's going in the right direction
* project can't have a top level website yet (incubator.kde.org/foo ?)
* project can't use the KDE brand yet
* sponsor regularly touches base with the committee regarding progress made
* if project is stalled (see details at the end of the active phase) or keep not conforming to the manifesto it gets archived

== Active ==
* project enters kdereview and follows the process from there (see also [https://community.kde.org/Policies/Application_Lifecycle Application Lifecycle])
* whole team behind the project is assumed to behave like other KDE teams
* project respects the manifesto
* stalled projects (no release for a year, no commits, no mailing-list activity)
** current maintainers are contacted to check what's happening
** if no chance to see activity again or no reply from existing maintainers after a month then a call to new maintainers is done
** if after a month no new maintainer showed up project gets archived
** if a new maintainer shows up he gets a six month trial, if the project is still inactive it gets archived

== Archived ==
* all data is archived
* VCS gets closed
* mailing list disabled
* only last download is available
* if someone wants to pick it up, it goes back to the candidate phase