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# System prepended metadata

title: Defining the path to CNCF Sandbo

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# Defining the path to CNCF Sandbox for Shipwright


## On CNCF projects

- There are 3 maturity levels: sandbox, incubating, graduated.
- A project maturity increase by demonstrating sustainability to CNCF. The maturity levels are crucial for enterprise adopters.


## Why not CNCF Incubation?

- Needs to document succesful adoption in Production by at least 3 independent adopters and show quality and scope. 
- Requires a healthy number of committers. A committer is someone that can accept contributions to some or of the project.
- Substantial ongoing flow of commits and merged contributions.
- A clear versioning scheme.



## On CNCF Sandbox


### Goals

Consist of four key points:

1. Encourage public visibility of something that can add value to the CNCF mission.
2. Facilitate alignment with existing projects.
3. Nurture Projects( via CNCF Service Desk requests ).
4. Remove possible legal and governance obstacles and contribution, by ensuring all projects adhere to CNCF legal, code of conduct and IP Policy requirements.


### Requirements

- A project that is designed to extend one or more CNCF projects with functionality or interoperability libraries.
- A project that fits the CNCF mission and provide potential for a novel approach to existing functional areas.
- Any project that realistically intends to join CNCF incubation in the future, and wishes to lay the foundation for that.


### Reviews for Candidatures

- Done by TOC, every 2 months.


## CNCF Sandbox Governance Advantage

- Project has a legally neutral home that is stable and known.
- Get into incubation level success faster:
    - visibility and association to CNCF
    - alignment with other CNCF projects
    - via CNCF Service Desk
- Adopt good principles of governance


## CNCF Sandbox Marketing Expectation

- Receive minimal marketing support from the Foundation.
- Limited CNCF investment in Digital and Product marketing for individual Sandbox projects.
- Sandbox projects listed separately from other CNCF projects.
- Not prominently listed at events or issued a press release
- Can stay in the sandbox indefinitely


## CNCF Sandbox annual reviews

- A CNCF Sandbox project is subject to annual reviews. Conclusion can lead to terminate the sponsorship and move the project into Archive.
- See https://github.com/cncf/toc/blob/main/process/sandbox-annual-review.md


## Post CNCF Sandbox Acceptance

- After a project is accepted, there is the need of a project onboarding with a list of todo's for Project maintainers.
- See example https://github.com/cncf/toc/issues/752


## CNCF Events

- Opportunity for in-person Kiosk at KubeCon + CloudNative Con
- Opportunity for Maintainer Session at KubeCon + CloudNative Con


## References

- https://www.cncf.io/services-for-projects/#marketing
- https://github.com/cncf/sandbox
- https://github.com/cncf/toc/blob/main/process/sandbox-annual-review.md
- https://github.com/cncf/toc/blob/main/process/toc-decision-process.md
- https://github.com/cncf/toc/blob/main/process/README.md
- https://www.cncf.io/sandbox-projects/