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Comment by akhayam | Hacker News Reader

You can read more about incubated and graduates CNCF projects here: https://www.cncf.io/projects/

Tldr: you can bring your open source project to CNCF and if there are enough infra/platform developers vouching for it then you can become an incubated project. After that, there is a bunch of boxes (traction, integration, stability) that you need to check before CNCF endorses you as a graduated project.

But what does it actually mean? Is this in incubator in the same sense as a startup incubator? This just sounds like a popularity contest, where the winners get a stamp of approval from the CNCF, provided you play by their rules. What value does the CNCF add?

Think of it as process maturity. They don't want to just rubber-stamp some company's project as a "CNCF" project, only to have it collapse when the company pulls employees off it.

As a gatekeeper (and as a result, status, attention, prestige, etc.)

Funding can be attained more readily if you have a project that reaches any of these stages.

So it's just a stamp of approval?

Also a lot of projects in sandbox or incubation are “finding themselves” so to speak. It’s what used to happen when a project would release a v1 that’s really mostly a POC, then have some major overhauls/rewrite in v2/v3. At least in theory by “graduation” or v3, you know that this thing has a non-trivial user base, fairly defined in what it does and how it does it. Some independent reviews and established patterns etc.

Nothing protecting them from rotting or dying or breaking obviously, but at least you know you won’t be shouting at it alone.

Sort of. It's also a statement of maturity.

> Sort of. It's also a statement of maturity.

And of funding. Some of the hoops such as a 3rd party audit are _not_ cheap

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