Index Data will pull back from some System Administration tasks by March 1, 2024 (announced and first discussed 2023-11-27 Community Council Meeting notes). This document describes the responsibilities Index Data is looking to transition to the community which amounts to 8-12 hours/week:
Assess PRs for various repos (folio-ansible, jenkins-pipeline-libs. Folio-tools, folio-org.github.io. raml (raml-util), platform-complete snapshot)
Currently four Index Data people contribute to this work (David Crossley, John Malconian, Peter Murray, Wayne Schneider). The community will need to identify a set of people to take these duties on. Index Data would like to transfer these to someone starting March 1, 2024.
Discussion / questions
Christopher: how are the 12 hrs structured?
Mike: Just the named tasks, not the refererence environments (which Index Data will continue to handle), and not the CI/CD needs.
Christopher: EBSCO has considered this work as well as the CI/CD work, and doesn't have capacity to take this on. However, there is a proposal:
EBSCO can contract for another EPAM person that could take on all of the tasks above as well as handle the CI/CD work. Their cost is roughly $80-$90k, EBSCO would continue to donate the same amount it does today - $139,000, which today are used to cover the AWS costs. So the Community would need to fund the $80-$90k of the new EPAM person.
To clarify the CI/CD person would cover all tasks on the lists as DevOps people can do systems admin things as well
Ian Walls: so all in all, a net loss of resourcing into the project, but to AWS instead of these infrastructure admin areas. Seems like a hierarchy of needs thing to me... DevOps and systems administration would need to be handled in order for a Developer Advocate to be effective
Kat B: Could the funding be added to the membership costs to secure this tasks?
Could be a good idea → if we have the funding, who could do the job except EPAM? Would be good to have the knowledge shared in the broader community
Simeon: If we pivot this discussion to paying for more effort for CI/CD (also including the listed tasks), should we write up the complete work?
Some raised the idea that Index Data be paid for these tasks so as not to continue to rely so much on EBSCO. Index Data indicated it would prefer to concentrate on their customers needs
Ian Walls: so what can FOLIO, as a Project, stop doing? What expenditures of resources can be dropped, and reallocated towards more critical parts?
Mike: proposal to write up the situation and option, and to vote on EBSCOs proposal next time. ID will provide more documentation around the CI/CD needs so we all understand what thie funding will cover.
Simeon: EPAM is the best option.
Boaz: Are they any other needs, the community needs to step in for? Shouldn't that considered and written down as well?
Christopher: to be clear - the CI/CD work is on top of the 12 hrs effort, and Index Data original mentioned a March 1 transition date - time is runnimg short: a DevOps resource would need time for ramping up
Mike: Index Data is not going to drop things until there is someone to transition them to
All: please check, correct and add the notes - thanks!
Financial Overview of FOLIO for members: Link can't be added!
Paula Sullenger: I don't think we should change membership levels. Address Deans/Directors to help with certain tasks. We had membership levels, then changed them after one year. We should keep the levels we have for at least 5 years, we can't bump them up every other year.
Ian Walls: It's going to be a hard sell to libraries to pay more, on top of what they're already paying for implementation/hosting/support, without a clear list of what that extra money is going to get them
Boaz: a small group is starting to work on the FOLIO story. Start at the membership drive. The community won't pay more money if there is not added value.
Marc Johnson: Sustainability is the key to this for me. Though, given the expectations already set, that could be a hard sell.
Simeon: we need more members - Paula agrees
Boaz: In order to get more members it will be great to know what will FOLIO develop for new members and in what way
Paula Sullenger 16:47 We had membership levels, then changed them after one year. We should keep the levels we have for at least 5 years, we can't bump them up every other year.
Boaz Nadav Manes (Lehigh) an Alle 16:48 In order to get more members it will be great to know what will FOLIO develop for new members and in what way
Simeon Warner (he/him) an Alle 16:48 Or how FOLIO will be easier to use because of fewer regressions…
Mike Gorrell an Alle 16:48 I agree Boaz - we need a clear “story” to set context and get alignment
Simeon Warner (he/him) 16:50 I think we can try to sell the benefit of joining and OSS to libraries that currently think of FOLIO as just a SaaS LMS
Marc Johnson 16:51 What are the benefits?
Simeon Warner (he/him) 16:53 Influence is one thing; extra info and shared problem solving is another; and then, more than solo influence, I think shared influence in actually working
out common ground (thanks to Edwin for just saying that) is a real community aspect
Edwin: how should the community look like in 5 years? We have different stakeholders and we need to clarify the common ground we are working on.
Kristin: What are the communities expectations of itself? What does joining mean? What is the story we need to tell.