2025-08-11 Community Council Meeting Minutes

Announcements & Agenda for Meeting
(5 min)

@Paul Kloppenborg @Tom Cramer

• Announcements

  • Tri-Council Meeting on August 28 at 10 AM ET (during PC timeslot)

    • Zoom = https://zoom.us/j/867230970

  • Tri-Council & Community Council meeting on Friday, Sept 26 at WOLFcon from 9 AM to 4 PM Kansas City (CDT)

    • CC members please enter your availability in this doc.

  • CC Member contact info: CC members please add your email & Google Account

    • folio-community-council@ole-lists.openlibraryfoundation.org

• Objectives

  • Common understanding and agreement on core challenges facing the FOLIO with regard to community-sustained software development.

    • “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and 5 minutes solving. it” – Albert Einstein

  • Brief summaries of each artifact / model then structured input from each CC member and any interested community participant

• Process

  • Add your reflections to this document

  • We will address potential solutions and action items in a later meeting.

Model 1: FOLIO Blueprint
(5 min)

@Tom Cramer

• Summary Presentation (4 slides)

• Origin: March summit notes → 35-page doc distilled into a slide deck.

• Highlights:
  • Annual AWS spend (~\$500 K) exceeds membership revenue (~\$340 K).
  • No centralized funding mechanism for software maintenance/development.
  • Proposes expanding revenue streams (institutions, hosts, dev firms) and funding central roles (release manager, QA lead).

Model 2: Contribution Network
(5-10 min)

@Mike Gorrell

• Goals:

  1. Developer marketplace for matching dev organizations with needs.

  2. Multiple revenue streams for hosting providers & others to sponsor code + maintenance.

  3. Mechanism for pooled funding of joint initiatives.

  4. Maintenance-weight “pointing” system to quantify module upkeep effort (100 points ≈ 1 FTE).

• Maintenance funding options:
  • General support pool
  • Module sponsorship by organizations
  • Second-tier expert support pool for specialized issues

• Next step: Assemble dev experts to validate pointing system and estimate historical maintenance effort.

Model 3: Community Driven Development Working Group
(5 min)

@Jeremy Huff @Jenn Colt @Charlotte Whitt

• Introduces a Development Initiative Proposal (DIP) process with 7 phases:

  1. Draft & submit proposal

  2. Council feedback & iteration

  3. Three-council endorsement

  4. RFP issuance via FOLIO.org

  5. MOU & resource collection

  6. Development & integration into release cycle

  7. Archival on completion

• Benefits: strengthens governance, enables access to pooled funds, embeds maintenance planning in proposals.

• Encourages assigning a liaison to shepherd each initiative.

Reactions
(5 min)

Everyone (working individually)

Each meeting participant provide their reactions to the documents in this reactions doc, addressing two questions:
1. what are the top (1-3) core problems to address
2. what are the top (1-3) solutions to explore

• Emerging themes:
  • Maintenance vs. new features: distinct funding/prioritization buckets needed.
  • Resource constraints: AWS hosting costs consume community budgets.
  • Governance effectiveness: call for more streamlined, not necessarily heavier, governance.
  • Community-hosted environments: potential to offload AWS cost by leveraging institutional infrastructure.

Moderated Discussion
(20 min)

Everyone

Next Steps
(5 min)

@Paul Kloppenborg @Tom Cramer

• Meeting schedule:

  • Tri-Council Virtual: August 28, 10:00 AM (normal Product Council slot)

  • WolfCon Tri-Council & CC: September 26, 9 AM – 4 PM CDT (order may invert)

• Feedback process: Use the shared reactions doc for asynchronous input and to define common problem statements.

• Next CC meeting: August 25 (finalize prep for Aug 28 Tri-Council).