Incubator process contains archived proposal location and outdated documentation

[danyeaw]

Next actions

• Confirm that the SSC is responsible for the incubation process : https://github.com/jupyter/governance/blob/main/software_steering_council.md?plain=1&rgh-link-date=2025-08-28T16%3A37%3A05.000Z#L18
• Add a warning to the governance docs that the incubation is currently out of date: Add a note about jupyter-incubation being due a review #289
• SSC updates the documentation around jupyter-incubator to reflect updated processes and the new governance model.

Context

As brought up in jupyter/jupyter#766, the Jupyter Governance for Subprojects says that new projects can apply for incubation at https://github.com/jupyter-incubator/proposals, however that project is archived. We need to update the documentation around jupyter-incubator.

[ivanov]

Thanks for bringing this up, @danyeaw . CC @jupyter/software-steering-council that should own the incubation process, as far as I understand.

[ivanov]

and actually, now that I look back at those governance docs, it only mentions the @jupyter/executive-council for approval, and also the previous governance model of when were the unified single Steering Council

[jasongrout]

One of the sole responsibilities of the SSC is:

Owning, managing and implementing the Jupyter Incubation process (jupyter-incubator).

Since adding a new subproject is a governance change, I think the final adoption needs to be approved by EC and SSC, but I think the incubation process up to that point is up to the SSC.

[krassowski]

Do we know who archived the proposals repo and why?

[krassowski]

This reemerged in jupyterlab/jupyterlab#17812

[krassowski]

It looks like some discussion happened last year but was not actioned:

• Request to move all repos from jupyter-incubator into jupyter software-steering-council-team-compass#24

[ellisonbg]

I think it would be helpful if we revive the incubator process to align with the new governance model. When we created Jupyter AI, the ideal place would have been the incubator. Because the incubator process was dormant and hadn't been updated to reflect the new governance model (as @ivanov mentions above), we decided to put Jupyter AI in the JupyterLab org "for now". There are a number of other efforts in the community where the incubator could be useful as well. It would be great if the software steering council could undertake this project (I do think they are the right group to own the process).

[choldgraf]

It feels like there are two points of clarity that need to be provided

1. At a governance level, make it clear that jupyter-incubator and the processes around it are owned by the SSC
2. The processes / docs about the incubator org need to be updated.

I'm happy to do (1), I think it's not my authority to define 2 (with me EC hat on). Does that sound right?

In the interim, I merged @krassowski 's PR to the governance docs just to make it clearer that the process as-documented is outdated

[ellisonbg]

I agree with the steps, but I believe that (1) is already complete:

https://github.com/jupyter/governance/blob/main/software_steering_council.md?plain=1#L18

[choldgraf]

Amazing thanks, I've updated the top comment with my understanding of the current state of play.

[krassowski]

I opened #292 and invite comments.