governance/reference/emerging-technology-and-inactive-projects.rst

Emerging and inactive projects

As a community we want to be inclusive for new projects under the OpenStack umbrella. This, however, isn't that easy as each project needs to fit many requirements (see new-projects-requirements for more details) and that can be sometimes hard for new projects.

In order to grow a new project team within OpenStack, we want to accept them into the OpenStack space when they have code that's functional enough to indicate what it is they want to accomplish, but at the same time we need to be clear to OpenStack consumers that such a project is not yet ready to be run in production due to factors such as the code repository not structured according to OpenStack standards, functionality is missing, etc.

It may also happen for already existing official OpenStack projects that they may not be so active anymore, they may not be able to do release on time or have broken testing or not merge incoming patches for long time.

In order to solve the above problems, there is Emerging technology state for such new projects and inactive state for existing projects that are not so active anymore. TC will keep working on such projects to make them consistent with OpenStack or try to transition inactive projects to active. TC might not be able to solve these problems but we will try to keep eyes on such projects and give our best effort to make them active.

Emerging technology is a state which can be set for new OpenStack projects. The state of inactive can be set for existing projects that aren't well maintained due to lack of maintainers or active contribution.

Entry criteria

If a new project wants to become an official OpenStack project, but it does not fit all requirements for new official projects (see new-projects-requirements for details) TC can consider to add such project to the OpenStack projects as Emerging technology.

For existing projects which became inactive due to lack of maintainers and are not able to do the mandatory activities, such as release, fix testing, review incoming code, etc., TC can consider marking such projects as inactive, try to solve the problem if we can but keep it in the official OpenStack projects list instead of deprecating and removing it immediately (see dropping-projects for more details).

Exit criteria

A project can exit the Emerging technology or inactive state by either becoming an active OpenStack project or by becoming a retired project.

A project is considered active when it meets all the requirements to be an OpenStack official project, which are described in new-projects-requirements. In particular, there must be a sufficient number of active maintainers to perform all the basic activities of OpenStack official projects.

A project may be retired by the TC if it does not complete the work required to become an active project within the timeline defined below.

Timeline

A new project must become an active OpenStack project before the third OpenStack coordinated release after the project has entered Emerging Technology status. For example, a project became OpenStack Emerging technology project in Yoga cycle then timeline for them is BB (after two releases, Zed and AA). In BB development cycle such project should meet all requirements for a new project listed in new-projects-requirements to stay as an official OpenStack project. If project is not able to become an official OpenStack project within that timeframe, TC will discuss with the team if more time is required for the project to meet the new-projects-requirements or will retire the project.

An existing project should be reinstated as an active OpenStack project before the release milestone-2 of the cycle they entered the inactive state to become active again and to be released in that cycle. In the case where an inactive project does not become active before the release milestone-2, there will be no release of it proposed by the release team in that cycle. In such a case, it is up to the project itself to get CI working and propose a release if that is needed. It may be required in some cases for example, when there will be security fixes or compatibility fixes merged in the project. In the case where an inactive project still does not become active during the next cycle after the cycle they entered the inactive state, the TC will discuss with the team if project will be retired before the release milestone-2 of the cycle. In such a case there will be no new releases of that project.

Tracking

At the end of each cycle, TC will evaluate this list of the Emerging technology and inactive projects and based on the timeline checks if any of them can become active or if it maybe should be retired. Any addition or removal of projects in this list will require a formal-vote.

Current Emerging Technology Projects

• Skyline (Added in Zed cycle)

Current Inactive Projects