Status

RESOLVED 

Blocking
OutcomeApproved: 9 in favor, 4 abstains.
Minutes Link08 APR 2021

Overview of Proposal

CNCF has very similar phases for its projects to what we have at Hyperledger but they use the term "Graduated" instead of "Active" after incubation. As we all know, the term "Active" has been a source of confusion for a long time and the term Graduated is a much better name. Using Graduated would end the confusion we have with Active and besides the initial cost of switching - updating all the docs, etc - there doesn't seem to be any downsides.

Formal Proposal(s)

Rename Active status and call it Graduated. Retain a reference to Active as the former name. Clearly specify that Graduated stands for "Graduated from Incubation" and not "Graduated from Labs" to avoid confusion.

Action Items

  • Update all documentation and the website accordingly

Reviewed By


6 Comments

  1. Gari Singh

    "Graduated" is probably a better term given how things have ended up in HL.  I still think that too big of a deal is made about "status" in the context of whether or not people will consume / use projects.  

  2. Tracy Kuhrt

    https://www.google.com/search?q=graduated+from+labs+hyperledger shows some interesting results

    • "The current Hyperledger Project Lifecycle provides for projects to be started in Incubation and graduate from there to Active projects."
    • "Currently, the project lifecycle at Hyperledger requires projects to be started in Incubation and graduate to Active"
    • "Labs graduated to project"
    • "The launch of Hyperledger Cactus, which graduated from Hyperledger Labs"
    • "This lab has graduated to the overall Fabric project."
    • "Looking to graduate into a full-fledged Hyperledger Project"

    It seems like we already use graduate quite a lot in the wiki pages and Hyperledger reports to mean two different things:

    1. projects graduating from incubation to active
    2. labs graduating to top-level projects

    Are there concerns regarding the meaning of #2 getting confused with "Graduated" as a state in the project lifecycle?

    1. Arnaud J Le Hors

      I agree there is a risk of confusion but I still think it is worth that risk. After all the same is true in English and we typically have to specify where one has graduated from: highschool, college, etc.

      I suggest we make the definition clear about what "Graduated" alone refers to and go with that.


  3. Arun S M

    Question: How can one make best use of information available to decide maturity of a project?

    1. Recommended place for all projects to start cooking is Hyperledger Labs.
    2. Graduate from Hyperledger Labs to Hyperledger, be in incubation phase.
    3. Move from incubation to Active.
    4. For project those were graduated from Hyperledger Labs, maturity is determined by the badging proposal.

    In one way or the other, they all define project's maturity. Do we need to think about simplifying these process?

    1. Arnaud J Le Hors

      I think we should always be looking for ways to simplify our processes but this isn't really pertinent to this particular proposal which is just about the name. And beware that we've already discussed at length whether to require projects to start in Labs and the answer is no. Unless you have some new information to justify revisiting this decision I think we'll have to leave that alone.

  4. Gari Singh

    The more I think about it, the more I like graduated.  Given we really have a set of steps/gates a projects must go through in the current "incubation to active" lifecycle, graduated does seem to fit the bill nicely.