Attendees
Guests: julie.bickle , Ian Walls
Discussion items
| Time | Item | Who | Notes |
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| 15 min | Update from Product Council | | Jesse Koennecke is unable to attend today, but has provided us this update on: - FOLIO Roadmap: Roadmap team has set up a Roadmap wiki page: FOLIO Roadmap. Next steps for the Roadmap are:
- Meet with key groups (POs, SIGs, Councils) to review and make any adjustments - likely by end of April.
- Share the Roadmap
- FOLIO Scope Criteria - Ian Ibbotson
- List of criterias to evaluate new apps for FOLIO (in a tdb definition): link
- in discussion what a "FOLIO app" is
- "Certification" and/or "including in "official" release"
- What technical issues do we need to resolve?
- What role could a FOLIO "marketplace" place play? What do we mean here?
- Providing a module / app overview of FOLIO rigth now and what areas of functionality do they cover and who is responsible
- explains, how many modules belong into one app (backend / frontend / services )
- list of orphaned apps still missing
- TDB: Evaluation about "core" of FOLIO, curate "sets of modules" / "regional set of apps"
- What technical questions / dependencies / architectual decisions need to be clarified / changed first to start into this future?
- Just reducing the number of apps might not help to built releases easier. Technical analysis needed first.
- Questions
- Simeon: has there been discussion of what the split between "core" and additional apps will mean for hosted customers? We would not want to make the landscape confusing for new implementers who might find "core" too limited and then get into complicated negotiation with vendors for extra modules that they need
- Ian W: an advantage of a full flower release / monolith is the delivery and market message to the customers - more granularity as a "customizable version" brings more flexibility but is much more inhomogeneous
- Priorities for FOLIO Development: This sub-group is updating PC later this week. Anyone is welcome to join the meeting:
- Capacity Planning Group review: PC discussed the roles and responsibilities of the Capacity Planning Team - Jesse Koennecke, Sharon Wiles-Young , and Martina Schildt will meet with Cap Planning members to revise the team charter, name, and membership, then bring proposal to PC for review/approval by end of April
- Other important topics/issues for PC:
- PC has established a wiki page for PC Subgroups here: Product Council Sub Groups. The purpose of this page is to help direct interested people to the current status or work of these groups.
- PC is aware of the need for new POs to join the project. We would appreciate any guidance from CC in recruiting POs and developers from the community.
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| 10 min | Update on current activities | | MOU, Membership Drive, Website, Treasurer, other - New FOLIO member: TU Munich - MoU is signed
- 2 new MOU's are pending
- New OLF Treasurer will shortly pick up work: Invoices will be send in a few weeks
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| 35 min | FOLIO Resourcing Model | Group Discussion | - what is our theory of resourcing for development
- what is our theory of resourcing for maintenance
- what do we want from project partners?
- how do product teams fit in
- how do we onboard new contributors
- what kind of resourcing do we want?
- how do we balance innovation vs. maintenance? who does each?
Discussion - What role will commercial vendors play here? Hugh investment right now.
- Question: what do we know about their future commitments? e.g. EBSCO?
- Harry: long term commitment! No changes in investment talked about right now, but maybe changes in resourcing and focuses
- strong commitment to the community
- Ian W: Commercial interests / customers interest are driving an ongoing interest in the community
- vendor customers are a part of the community, and many are driving the engagement
- Important to be clear what we mean when we say "FOLIO": platform / software / community all have same name.
- Ian I / K-Int: platform idea was key in engagement
- reach the market through the platform with the built apps
- We would very much like to build a sustainable business around small vertical apps (ERM, OA, ILL, etc) rather than full-system hosting.. But it does increasingly feel like hosting might be the only viable way to make a commercial offering viable.
- Keven: FOLIO is ultimately supported by library funding, and the willingness of libraries to support it depends on the competitiveness of the product, so an industrial ecology around FOLIO platform needs to be built, with an open protocol to attract enough companies to join.
- Leander: develop new functionality → funding will be possible
- but limited in terms of time and funding - just designed as "projects"
- decision is open with
- GBV: invest in sustainability and maintenance of platform / software to ensure a safe working environment for customers of commercial and non-profit service providers and self-hosting institutions - besides enhancing functionality
- general issue in open source projects - doesn't make it less important
- Mike G.
- Ian I.: Something that has come up a lot in scope-criteria discussions is how these themes are being played out in open source in general - so 100% agree these issues are not unique
- Harry:
- Community has no own developing team and that is not the way forward
- Agreement from Mike / Simeon
- Dracine:
- I’ll say my natural inclination is to promote community teams, but I do question it now
- Harry:
- form small developer teams getting the work done
- outside FOLIO's internal structure
- Ian I: I think there is a strong desire for "teams" to have "ownership" over artefacts - it's unpleasant for developers to be treated as fungible resources if they are doing something "For the love of it" - they need to feel like they have some ownership over the solution. And that's a bit tricky when we have a need for long term sustainable support for core modules.
- Keven Liu
The community needs a team to provide minimal core support, as well as to participate in a steering committee to control the direction and at least sustain it if there is no corporate support
- Simeon: @Keven - what do you think the scope of such a core team would be?
- Answer: The core team can be large or small, and as an open source software, it is important to address who will do the work with no profit return, which will affect library users if the community cannot afford it.
- Mike G.: commercial vendors have interests in FOLIOs sustainability for their own interest
- Leander: more libraries will appear as customers - not many single libraries will do their own engagement
- Mike G:
- Even if the community would wish, that enough funding will be there to support FOLIOs sustainablilty we should see, that the commercial interests in the project will ensure the sustainability as well
- Maybe we won't have a community owned "core" team, there are other options to reach that goal by tasking development companies, etc.
- Ian I.:
- One challenge here is that "a team that knows a module inside-out" can support it at a fraction of the cost of a fungible resource picking up code they have never seen before will be much less viable - and that's before you start factoring in the cost of sub-optimal fixes .
- Simeon: Agree Ian — the “core” of FOLIO is split over many dedicated teams
- Marko:
- "Core team" as quality check group and overseeing the projects acitivities and sustainability
- Maik G: how to sustain such a team?
- Kevin:
- In the case of the Chinese community, we would like to employ at least one architect as chief engineer and a technical team of 3-5 people to review the modules developed by each company for compliance with the specifications or commission a third party to review them and report publicly. In extreme cases this team can help library users find the right business partners to advance the adoption of FOLIO.
- Simeon:
- What can the community contribute to the sustainablity? If no own team is provided?
- Ian W:.
- Documentation is key for a community like FOLIO, and can be contributed by non-developers
- Ian I: The coordination role (standards, testing, docs) and providing "The minimum intervention required to maintain cohesion" seems very much like a "core" activity
- Agreement by Marko and Dracine
- Kevin: Yes. TC can do the job also.
But we don't want to let people contribute without paying people to do so.
Action item: @all - please add to this discussion and clean up comments or add missing statements Goal: Providing a summary of valid statements from the CC!
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| Parking Slot | Next Meetings! | CC meeting May 23, 2022: Introduction of new FOLIO member FAU Nuremberg-Erlangen - send invitation to Kontanze Söllner (konstanze.soellner@fau.de ), Schenker, Ingrid <ingrid.schenker@fau.de>; Scholz, Martin <martin.scholz@fau.de>
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