# ECS Proposal Stages

These are the stages that an individual RFC advances through before being released for general availability in the Elastic Common Schema (ECS). See the Contributing Guide for broader details about contributing changes to ECS through the RFC process.

| Stage | Goals during this stage | Criteria for consideration for this stage | Acceptance into this stage signifies | Acceptable changes to schema in this stage | Breaking changes expected after acceptance into this stage | Recommended types of usage implementation
--- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---
0 | Strawperson | Discuss with domain or subject matter experts the utility of these changes Discuss with ECS team whether these changes seem appropriate for ECS | Opened RFC pull request for this strawperson at elastic/ecs | The premise of these changes is not obviously useless or inappropriate for ECS | None | Major | N/A
1 | Draft | Make the case for these changes Describe the field definitions at a high level Identify potential challenges and areas that need more clarity | Opened pull request for this proposal revising the existing strawperson Identified "sponsor" at Elastic who will participate in RFC process and take ownership of the change after the process completes Outlined initial field definitions High-level description of examples of usage High-level description of example sources of data Identified potential concerns and implementation challenges/complexity Subject matter experts identified and weighed in on the high level utility of these changes in the pull request ECS team weighed in on appropriateness of these changes in the pull request | ECS team accepts the premise of the addition and commits to considering this proposal as it advances. | Draft field definitions can be committed to the ECS schema as "experimental" fields | Major | Proof of concepts, demos
2 | Candidate | Identify a comprehensive set of field definitions that could be appropriate for real-world usage | Opened pull request for this draft revising the existing proposal Completed field definitions Included a real world example source document Identifies scope of impact of changes to ingestion mechanisms (e.g. beats/logstash), usage mechanisms (e.g. Kibana applications, detections), and the ECS project (e.g. docs, tooling) Subject matter experts weighed in on technical utility of field definitions in the pull request | The initial field definitions comprehensively model the addition to the schema. Fundamental questions and concerns are resolved, though some less significant questions remain open. | Candidate field definitions can be committed to the ECS schema as "beta" fields | Iterative | Experimental features
3 | Finished | Indicate that the addition is ready for GA release in ECS | Opened pull request for this candidate revising the existing candidate Included multiple real world example source documents Existing or newly raised questions and concerns are addressed No objections from sponsor, ECS team, or subject matter experts | There are no further open questions or unaddressed concerns, and the field definitions are complete based on the information and usage experience we have. | Field definitions can be committed to the ECS schema as "GA" fields | None outside major versions | Any
X | Abandoned | The changes are no longer being actively pursued. | Opened pull request revising the existing proposal Describe why the proposed changes are being abandoned | The proposal will no longer advance. | Any candidate field definitions will be removed from the ECS schema. | N/A | N/A