Development Resources/HOWTO/Archived Phase

Guidelines for Archived Phase

See "6.2.6 Archived Phase" in the Eclipse Development Process.

Projects that become inactive, either through dwindling resources or by reaching their natural conclusion, are archived. Projects can reach their natural conclusion in a number of ways: for example, a project might become so popular that it is absorbed into one of the other major frameworks.

Projects are archived as follows:

• The project leaders write a short description of the project, its goals, its accomplishments, and (if any) the remaining work.
  • If the project leaders do not provide a description within a reasonable time, the project's PMC will supply a description in which case the project leaders can always provide a description at a later time.
• The mailing lists, newsgroups, website, and complete source code repositories are stored in an archive (a zip or tar.gz) on the eclipse.org servers.
• The mailing lists are disabled but the archives are retained.
• The forums are retained.
• The source code repository repository is removed.
• All downloads are removed from the website.
• The project website is replaced with a single page describing the archived status of the project. The page explains that members are welcome to return the project to active status via another Creation Review - at which point the archive zip would be used to restore the state.
• The project is removed from the main links of its hosting PMC and placed on a separate archived projects page.

Archiving is not a value judgment of the project; rather, an archived project is one that has reached its natural conclusion. No project lasts forever and there is a natural ebb and flow to technology. Projects that are less actively maintained are more likely to end in the archived state, but projects that are highly successful also end up being archived after being absorbed into the mainstream of an existing top-level project.

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