The Jasig Incubator – What’s the Big Idea?

Last year Jasig began an incubation process for higher education open source projects.  Since its start, a number of projects have applied for incubation, both large and small.  Some of the smaller ones are useful portlets for uPortal or any other standards-compliant portal.  Some of the larger projects still in incubation are OpenRegistry, an Identity Management System (IDMS) that’s a place for data about people affiliated with your organization. (http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/OR/Home) and HelpDesk, an enterprise help desk application contributed by ESUP-Portail, our colleagues in France (http://www.esup-portail.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=884762). Last month we celebrated Bedework, the enterprise calendar system, for its emergence from the Incubator as an official Jasig project (http://www.bedework.org).

What’s the idea behind the Jasig Incubator?  We are aiming to provide a home to worthy projects in search of community.  And what is worthiness, in Jasig terms?  Projects that qualify for the Incubator are created by people who are passionate about their work.  Often, but not always, they are already in use at one or more institutions providing value that deserves to be shared.  They are open source and standards-based, and they fill a need in higher education.  Schools that apply to the Incubator are seeking collaborators from other like-minded institutions.

If they meet these criteria and are accepted, Jasig helps mentor the team to meet the requirements of an official project (e.g., is properly licensed; forms a steering committee; adopts sound development, quality, and release policies; has attracted diverse committers; practices Jasig values and processes; and shows other signs of sustainability).

The project can then take advantage of what Jasig has to offer: a technology infrastructure and services; mailing lists, announcements, wiki, and web presence; governance policies; conferences, meetups, and training opportunities; a growing team of commercial partners and affiliates; and, most important, a community of peers who value collaboration and sharing in the interests of creating high-value software for higher education.

We know that it doesn’t make sense to create these applications on our own and that our best chance for sustainable software is through building community.  Hence the Jasig Incubator.

If you would like to learn more about the Jasig Incubator, send an email to info at jasig dot org.

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