There’s been a desire within the CNCF TOC and community to provide further clarity around project maturity levels in CNCF and this has resulted into the CNCF Sandbox proposal after a month of discussion: https://github.com/cncf/toc/pull/92

When we initially created the Inception project level, it was intended to provide an avenue for technically interesting early-stage projects that were beneficial to the cloud-native community. We are transitioning Inception projects to the Sandbox. When we say that Sandbox projects are "early stage" this covers the following examples:

- New projects that are designed to extend one or more CNCF projects with functionality or interoperability libraries. In the case of Kubernetes, the Sandbox is intended as a home for projects that would previously have started in the Kubernetes Incubator.

- Independent projects that fit the CNCF mission and provide potential for a novel approach to existing functional areas (or are an attempt to meet an unfulfilled need)

- Projects commissioned or sanctioned by the CNCF, including initial code for CNCF WG collaborations, and "experimental" projects

- Any project that realistically intends to join CNCF Incubation in future and wishes to lay the foundations for that

Please vote (+1/0/-1) by replying to this thread; the full proposal located here: https://github.com/cncf/toc/pull/92

Remember that the TOC has binding votes only, but we do appreciate non-binding votes from the community as a sign of support! Note, if the proposal passes, CNCF staff will make updates to website and all other marketing collateral regarding this change.

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Chris Aniszczyk (@cra) | +1-512-961-6719