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Development Resources/Process Guidelines/What is Incubation
What is Incubation?
See "6.2.3 Incubation Phase" in the Eclipse Development Process.
After the project has been created, the purpose of the incubation phase is to establish a fully-functioning open-source project. In this context, incubation is about developing the process, the community, and the technology. Incubation is a phase rather than a place: new projects may be incubated under any existing Top-Level Project.
The web page you were last at belongs to an Eclipse Project that is in the Incubation Phase. Incubation indicates that the Eclipse community is helping this project "learn the ropes" about being a full open source project producing high quality extensible frameworks and exemplary tools. Projects typically stay in the incubation phase for a year or two before graduating to the Mature Phase.
The classification of a project in the Incubation Phase is not a statement about the quality of the project's code - it may be good (in fact, Eclipse Projects are often excellent), it may not - as with all open-source projects, that is for you to decide. Rather, Incubation Phase is more about the project team's progress in practicing the open and public processes necessary to establish the three communities (developers, adopters, and users) around the project.
For more information about Incubation Phase, read the Eclipse Development Process and/or the Guidelines for Incubation Phase.
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