The CNCF, which governs cloud-native technologies like Kubernetes, has a well-defined progression for projects to ensure their maturity, sustainability, and widespread adoption. These stages reflect a project's readiness for production use and the health of its ecosystem.
The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) categorizes its projects into three ascending stages of maturity:
Sandbox: This is the entry-level stage for early-stage projects. These projects are still in the experimental phase and under active development, with the potential to address an important challenge in the cloud-native ecosystem.
Incubation: This is the middle stage, where a project demonstrates increased adoption, community activity, and potential for long-term viability. Projects at this stage are expected to meet certain technical and community requirements, such as having multiple maintainers and users.
Graduation: This is the highest level of maturity for a CNCF project. Graduated projects are widely adopted, have demonstrated their stability and security, and have robust community and governance practices in place.
As projects progress through these stages, their credibility and trust in the industry grow. Organizations adopting these technologies often prefer Incubation or Graduated projects, as these are more likely to be supported and stable for long-term use.