2024-02-26 Community Council Meeting Notes

FOLIO System Administration and DevOps

Mike Gorrell  

Per previous discussions (12-Feb-2024, 27-Nov-2023) Index Data will be moving away from some of the DevOps support that they’ve handled forever. We discussed how to deal with the DevOps work in the community in two areas: General System Administration and CI/CD work. ID had estimated 8-12 hours per week for the System Administration work. Because of skill-sets Index Data approached EBSCO about taking on the CI/CD work that has not gotten the needed attention. EBSCO is not able to take those on with current resources.

Last meeting Christopher Spalding suggested that EBSCO could hire a DevOps engineer from EPAM for approximately $85,000, which could be paid by the community (EBSCO would keep it’s donation to FOLIO at $139k).

In prep for today’s meeting Index Data summarized the CI/CD work:

The CI/CD work involves maintaining the various pipelines associated with every module located at FOLIO   (there are currently 294 repositories - 185 Backend and 109 Frontend). The backend modules are set up to use Jenkins, the tool that was used when FOLIO began. There is a Shared Library for FOLIO Jenkins Pipeline that each module can rely on for CI/CD actions. Over the last few years the DevOps team has been moving these to GitHub Actions - all of the frontend modules have been migrated. Staff have not had time to migrate the backend to Github Actions, so as a result the team must try to maintain two different sets of tools, adding to the maintenance burden. These pipelines need to be updated, for example, to deal with new versions of software (packages/libraries/etc.) that the build process relies on. These also have to be created when a new module is introduced. It is easy to imagine this work consuming a full FTE - at least until Jenkins workflows have been moved to Github actions. The current state is that only emergency maintenance is done.

Today we’ll vote (quorum is ok) on funding the DevOps - we have 2 options

1. EBSCO with EPAM

   1. EBSCO need to downtrend investment over the next years. But AWS sides are needed and the other described tasks → so an internal shift to EPAM would continue the communites support. SOW / MoU with the community
      from Chat: Ian Walls 16:18
      so, bigger picture, we're losing IndexData's donated time/effort for these key CI/CD and sysadmin work, and over the next few years, EBSCO will be reducing their contribution as well. As we've discussed previously, asking libraries to give more, on top of the hosting/support fees they may be paying, is not an easy sale.

2. Index Data continues and be funded by the community

   1. ID would like to present a detailed plan what is needed and a quote

   2. ID could provide the service in the meantime a new person could be hired from the funding
      from Chat: Ian Walls 16:18
      so we're just going to have fewer resources to work with... what is the community going to stop doing over the next few years to account for this reduced resourcing?

Discussion

Kirstin: for a vote we need all information: ID’s quote as well

Maccabee Levine 16:20
FWIW, Technical Council did previously express support for the community funding the FOLIO reference environments.  The CI/CD work is somewhat analogous -- shared community technical resources that the product requires.  I think it is great to be able to consider multiple proposals.

Simeon:

Could EBSCO (Christopher) and Index Data (Mike) do a written up quote what would be possible to offer? This will be shared in advance of the next meeting to prepare for a vote.

Action item: papers will be provided until next Monday, March, 4 2024

Action item: please attend next meeting for voting!

Treasurer’s update

Paula Sullenger

As approved at the last meeting, $90,000 was transferred from checking to the reserve account. Reserve now is fully funded at $180,000.

YTD income and expenses are updated as of Jan 31. FY24

FY25 invoices should be sent out May/June. Recommend we follow last year’s practice and send out reminders to key contacts early May.

Action item: please announce if you would like to change something in the MoU

Financial situation is very good. If membership level stays the same and expensives as well → 60.000 $ as a good buffer.

Action item: Call for new treasurer!

Co-chairs will take action to reach out to the community.

Boaz: can we built processes that are activated if we need to address questions like the above? Marketing team?

Backlog of topics to discuss

FOLIO Developer Advocate

Mike Gorrell

First two candidates were rejected. Third candidate was interviewed the week of Feb 19 and the committee is deliberating. We confirmed with the treasurer that our current budget estimate for FY25 support both the developer advocate and possible CI/CD staffing

Action items to follow up with

Community communication norms

Tom Cramer Ian Ibbotson (Use this one) Christopher Spalding 

From 2023-08-25 Meeting notes

• idea about changing the ask on SIG's!  Information and discussion in the SIGs and a transport of summaries to upper levels

• asking how communication flows across the project, new people don't know, need some guidance for the project

• no update

Application and Platform Formalization WG

Ian Ibbotson (Use this one) (liaison to CC)

Notes folder: Application and Platform Formalization Proposals WG

Outreach and Marketing WG

Boaz Nadav Manes 

WG charge from 2023: WG charge from 2023: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZTOUOhwUtWaEjywKkS0cA41t1h0Wzhv_F9FR5Cyhqzk/edit