2025-10-20 Meeting notes

1 min

Scribe

@Kevin Day followed by @Shelley Doljack

Reminder:  Please take attendance. Please paste the Zoom chat into the notes.  If you miss it, this is saved along with the meeting recording, but having it here has benefits.

5-15 min

Liaison Updates

@Maccabee Levine

@Christie Thomas

@Craig McNally

• CC:  @Maccabee Levine:

  • The meeting mostly dealt with action items from WOLFcon CC and tri-council meetings.  Three action items that involve TC or our members:

    • Develop dashboard for tracking Jira points and cost metrics. (TC)

      • This might start after the initial counting and might need to be added to the subgroup lists.

    • “Counting things” follow up from DC Summit (spring 2025) - (Jenn, Shawn, Tom C)

    • Convene AWS working group (“One Circle Red”) to draft cost sharing design and investigate feasibility of distributed hosting (in kind contributions of hosting env.) (Stephen, Peter, Wayne, …).  Separate from the AWS Cost Management group, which is short-term/operational.  This new group (continued from 2024 WOLFcon) trying to come up with a new model entirely for supporting these service needs, perhaps other hosting options entirely.

      • We needed to add an active TC member to the AWS cost management group. Wayne wasn’t aware of being in this group, but Wayne has now volunteered to assist.

    There was also a great presentation in the last 10 minutes about the FOLIO community in Latin America, and how to get those institutions more involved in the Slack community / governance / membership / etc.

• PC: @Christie Thomas

  • October 9 and October 16 meetings

  • Sub-group formation: Setting up sub-groups to address the three priorities for the year -- Community Dashboard, Community Driven Development, Release Management Communication and Roles. Non-PC members are invited to participate on the sub-groups.

    • Ended up with a high level discussion about balancing a widely adopted format with the need for FOLIO to be a more agnostic platform.

  • MM SIG priorities. Robust discussions around searching in Inventory and balancing the support for MARC in the UI given that it is the format that is most widely adopted at the moment and the desire for FOLIO to be format agnostic.

• RMS Group:

  • CSPs for Sunflower and Ramsons being prepped, should be last for R (#8).

  • Some impact from AWS outage on automated functions, rebuilding

  • Discussion of the support periods issue

• Security Team:

  • business as usual

• Eureka Early Adopters:  @Craig McNally:

  • Latest status updates can be found here.

  • https://folio-org.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/FOLIJET/pages/1278476307

    • Better to track it on the wiki rather than the spreadsheet listed above.

• Community Driven Development (@Jenn Colt / @Maccabee Levine):

  •  

5 min

Upcoming Meetings

All

• Oct 20, 2025 - Regular TC meeting

• Oct 22, 2025 - FOLIO Support Periods for Ramsons ?

• Oct 27, 2025 - Regular TC meeting

• Oct 29, 2025 -

• Dedicated Discussion Topics:

  • https://folio-org.atlassian.net/wiki/x/VQBTR

  • FOLIO API Standardization & Documentation

    • Surface current issues with API documentation and discoverability. API versioning ability and access by release/module?

    • Validation standards

    • API usage for bulk operations

    • Breaking changes notifications

      • Dedicated channel for breaking changes announcements (forwarded from #folio-development)

      • Tag breaking changes in Jira; auto-populate wiki page for external monitoring

  • Define FOLIO Core: Establish clear definition of what constitutes “core” FOLIO vs others.

    • what should integrate vs what needs to be in FOLIO

    • Simplification opportunities

  • Cost Reduction & Resource Optimizations

    • Sidecar proliferation

    • Kafka usage visibility and optimization

    • AWS cost analysis

  • wOLFcon Technical Track Planning: Proposal for technical conference track alongside general wolfcon. Ensure non-developer access

    • Format options: virtual conference, two-day technical overlay, hybrid

    • Employer outreach for developer/operations engineer participation

    • FOLIO contribution vehicle

  • Environment Variable Management

    • Inconsistencies in environment variable usage

    • Best practices and standards

    • Documentation requirements

    • Migration strategy for existing modules

  • Technology Visibility & Scanning: Automated scanning and reporting on FOLIO technology stack

    • leverage existing work by David Crossley

    • Language and framework scanning

    •  

• Topics from Wolfcon sessions that could get into dedicated discussion

  • Folio “Core” definition

  • Estimating support costs

  • Getting People to contribute to Folio

  • Working costs of supporting modules

  • Costs of development environment (AWS)

• Security team DR for support periods- Sep 17, 2025

0 min

TCR Board Review

All

3 min

Existing Module Evaluation

ALL

• @Maccabee Levine created a spreadsheet

  with some information like age of repository on existing modules which could be used to see which modules need review. Julian also had the idea in slack to use sonar metrics to decide which modules get picked.

• mod-ebsconet and ui-export-manager has been chosen to be first modules.

• Criteria is being drafted at https://github.com/folio-org/tech-council/pull/98/files

  • Made updates to the https://github.com/folio-org/tech-council/pull/98, based on the discussion. All of the exceptions have been removed.

  • @Maccabee Levine can be merged.

10 min

Technical Council Sub-Groups Updates

All

Licensing Subgroup

• PR #108 to prohibit additional LGPL dependencies.

  • Lazy consensus approved.

• The subgroup is cleaning up the Q&A document as our work product.

Subgroup will be finalizing MVP of the tool, documenting eval process, and documenting answers to our original questions. Wrap up this month.

• Discussed last meeting that the subgroup is documenting the use of Olamide’s FOLIO Module Evaluator tool. Working on several PRs to support this, for discussion in November once the tool is MVP ready.

  • TC Module Eval PR #3 on how the list of licenses should be managed.

  • PR #109 recommending the tool for use during a trial period

  • PR #110 requiring the tool’s use (for TC review next April/May).

• Also working on a PR #111 on how to deal with certain third-party dependency license issues that we may run into while we wait for CC’s legal responses.

• It would be great if the TC could look over this information ahead of time before the November meetings where the finalized work will be presented.

1 min

GitHub RFCs

Wiki RFCs

All

30 min

Decision Log

All

• We need to discuss the distributed configuration timeline. Going from mod-configuration to mod-settings. RFC-0006. We extended the deprecation timeline to Umbrella Leaf. A Decision Record seems like the right place to do this. @Florian Gleixner : We can modify the Decision Record. I wanted to wait for the teams to give a timeline when they will be able to do the switch. But we can switch it if we decide to do it in Umbrella Leaf. → We will adapt the change in Umbrella Leaf.

  • @Florian Gleixner : Talked to @Oleksii Petrenko: We have to find all settings, that are not part of a backend module like language settings and propose a solution for that.

  • @Wayne Schneider and @Florian Gleixner will start a subgroup to do this work.

  • Need input on capacity before making any decisions on RFC-0006.

  • Goal: Need to put together a solution and propose that solution. Check-in again in ~2 weeks.

Support periods

• https://folio-org.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/TC/pages/1187348628

  • Starts with general availability (GA).

  • End determined by Technical Council based on support period of officially supported technologies.

  • Current release support periods end:

    • Ramsons support period ends Dec 31, 2025

    • Sunflower support period ends Jun 30, 2026

    • Trillium support period ends Dec 31, 2026

  • This proposal has not been presented anywhere else.

  • Concerns about acceptance by the community because of the reliance on CSPs.

  • Also noted that the support period for Ramsons may be impacted by the delay in the Trillium release.

  • Migrating from Ramsons to Sunflower is complex and is still under development for some providers and communities. There may not be a critical mass of implementers on Sunflower by the time the proposed support period ends.

  • RMS group should be consulted on this proposal.

    • RMS group is now being consulted on this proposal.

      • Hosting companies do not have an incentive on supporting Ramsons. Whatever the community says it will support needs to be realistic.

  • If there is a P1 security vulnerability in Spring in January, then the cost would be too high. We should raise concerns and vote on this.

  • PC is waiting on TC before making any decisions.

  • TC Conversations:

    • Is there a risk in forking/splitting if supporting both?

      • Yes, there is risk. The risk is manageable.

      • The question of support of Sunflower is orthogonal to this question. This is mostly about Spring-Boot and possibly Go.

      • We are taking on the risk that there would be something expensive to deal with.

    • The specific support end date is determined by the TC, so this is the longer term consideration to keep in mind as we are considering this proposal.

    • We cannot guarantee security support past the end date of the underlying libraries. However, explicitly not supporting P1 security issues at all is a much harsher statement that we should avoid. This harsh statement is why some TC members cannot support this. It is argued that we should still maintain P1 security support within this particular time period.

    • It is suggested that we should also re-word the support period document to explicitly focus on security support.

      • Julian: The security in this is a one time exception.

      • The real issue is that people may not have gotten to Sunflower yet.

    • Can/should the community mandate that some company to update and make releases for software not used by their own customers?

      • Most of the current issues in this current situation are regarding infrastructure changes rather than functional changes.

      • Part of the long term goal is to get away with flower release, so we do not need to come up with a forever solution. Keep our scope to Ramsons or maybe Sunflower.

    • There are current disagreements on accepting this proposal as it stands due to existing wording regarding accepting CSPs after December, 2025.

      • Others note that there is language within this policy that addresses this. This information has been pulled to the top to avoid further confusion or uncertainty on this.

      • We also took out the explicit refinement statement and will just assume that this will happen.

    • For long term consideration beyond this proposal, we should consider another proposal regarding how we handle supporting dependencies that go out of support.

    • Attempted Lazy Consensus

      • Wayne brought up questions regarding if this is subject to approval by other councils. Julian mentioned that the document that the PC is listed to needing to approve this as well. We cannot simply make this change without PC approval.

      • TC Approved by Lazy Consensus.

        • We will have to update the Wed meeting schedule as a result.

5 min

Officially Supported Technologies (OST)

All

• https://folio-org.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/TC/pages/966852629/Umbrellaleaf

@Wayne Schneider : With the delay of Trillium, do we have to look at the OST pages of Trillium also?

@Olamide Kolawole : We probably have to look at the OST pages from Ramsons and Sunflower also

NA

Zoom Chat

Maccabee Levine 10:01 AM
I have to drop off at ~11:45 ET.

Craig McNally 10:10 AM
https://folio-org.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/FOLIJET/pages/1278476307

Wayne Schneider 10:12 AM
He has another role as the OLF sys admin, I think
LOL could just say "does not apply"

Maccabee Levine 10:12 AM
from the AWS discussion earlier, a change to membership would be needed here https://folio-org.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/COSTS and presumably to #folio-aws-costs. And I hope Peter keeps participating as well (!) as the guy who is hands on and knowledgeable with AWS.

Wayne Schneider 10:19 AM
Is this something I should do (reach out to the group, etc.) or is this something for @Jenn Colt or @Olamide Kolawole?

Jenn Colt 10:19 AM
It would be great if you could
Yes I don’t think this is a Peter replacement, just an addition

Christie Thomas (she/her) 10:31 AM
But that is out of scope of what we are voting on here?

Maccabee Levine 10:41 AM
I agree with Wayne's concern about functional CSPs.  As I have to drop off in a few minutes, I'll ask Wayne to proxy for me if any votes happen today.

Decision Log Review

All

Review decisions that are in progress.  Can any of them be accepted?  rejected?

Translation Subgroup

All

Since we're having trouble finding volunteers for a subgroup, maybe we can make progress during a dedicated discussion session?

Communicating Breaking Changes

All

Currently there is a PoC, developed by @Maccabee Levine, of a utility to catalog Github PRs that have been labeled with the "breaking change" label. We would like to get developer feedback on the feasibility of this label being used more often, and the usefulness of this utility. 

Officially Supported Technologies - Upkeep

All

Previous Notes:

• A workflow for these pages. When do they transition from one state to another. Do we even need statuses at all ?

Stripes architecture group has some questions about the Poppy release.

Zak: A handshake between developers, dev ops and the TC. Who makes that decision and how do we pass along that knowledge ? E.g. changes in Nodes and in the UI boxes. How to communicate this ? We have a large number of teams, all have to be aware of it.  TC should be alerted that changes are happening. We have a couple of dedicated channels for that. Most dev ops have subscribed to these channels. How can dev ops folk raise issues to the next level of community awareness ? There hasn't been a specific piece of TC to move that along.

Craig: There is a fourth group, "Capacity Planning" or "Release Planning". Slack is the de facto communication channel.  There are no objections to using Slack. An example is the Java 17 RFC. 

Craig: The TC gets it on the agenda and we will discuss it. The TC gets the final say.

Marc Johnson: We shouldn’t use the DevOps Channel. The dev ops folks have made it clear that it should only be used for support requests made to them.

Jakub: Our responsibility is to avoid piling up technical debt.

Marc: Some set of people have to actually make the call. Who lowers the chequered flag ?

Craig: It needs to ultimately come to the TC at least for awareness. There is a missing piece. Capacity Planning needs to provide input here. 

Marc: Stakeholders / Capacity Planning could make that decision. Who makes the decision ? Is it the government or is it some parts of the body ?

Marc: the developers community, the dev ops community and sys ops are involved. For example the Spring Framework discussion or the Java 17 discussion. But it was completely separate to the TC decision. It is a coordination and communication effort.

Marc: Maybe the TC needs to let go that they are the decision makers so that they be a moderating group.

Jakub: I agree with Marc. But we are not a system operating group. Dependency management should be in the responsibility of Release management. There are structures in the project for that.

Jason Root: I agree with Jakub and with Marc also. Policies should drive operational/release/support aspects of Folio.

Jason Root: If the idea of “support” is that frameworks are supported, then of course the project should meet that.

Marc Johnson
Some group needs to inform OleksAii when a relevant policy event occurs.
These documents effectively ARE the manifestation of the policy.

Craig: This is a topic for the next Monday session.

Craig to see if Oleksii Petrenko could join us to discuss the process for updating the officially supported technologies lists.

Dev Documentation Visibility

All

Possible topic/activity for a Wednesday session:

Discuss/brainstorm:

• Ideas for the type of developer-facing documentation we think would be most helpful for new developers

• How we might bring existing documentation up to date and ensure it's consistent 

• etc.

API linting within our backend modules

All

https://folio-project.slack.com/archives/CAQ7L02PP/p1713343461518409

Hello team, I would like to discuss API linting within our backend modules. Some time ago, we transitioned our linting process from Jenkins to GitHub Actions as outlined in https://folio-org.atlassian.net/browse/FOLIO-3678. I am assuming that this move was done via some technical council decision. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
In my observations, I've found two problems:

1. Schema linting does not occur if the schemas are in YAML format.

2. There are issues with resolving some deeper references during API linting.

Although I'm unsure about how to improve the existing linting implementations within Folio, I propose to consider an open-source solution that handles OpenAPI linting effectively and allows us to define custom rules. For your reference: https://stoplight.io/open-source/spectral A test of this solution can be found in this PR: https://github.com/folio-org/mod-search/pull/567. The same PR also provides an example of custom rule definition: https://github.com/folio-org/mod-search/pull/567/files#diff-d5da7cb43c444434994b76f3b04aa6e702c09e938de09dbc09d72569d611d9ab.Also, by employing 'Spectral', I discovered AsyncAPI (https://www.asyncapi.com/en), an API design tool similar to OpenAPI but for asynchronous interactions. I suggest that we consider using AsyncAPI in FOLIO to generate documentation for Kafka interactions.

PR Templates

All

https://folio-project.slack.com/archives/CAQ7L02PP/p1713445649504769

Hello team, Small request to consider.
Regarding pr templates.

1. From my perspective, pr template is not good idea. Even the biggest open source projects that are contributed by many people don't have any pr template. Currently what we have for acq modules https://github.com/folio-org/mod-orders-storage/blob/master/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md

2. These pr template is inconsistent in different teams.

What I suggest is that, pr template shouldn't be any instructions, because most developer who are creating pr have already understand the rules. If we put just two section into template, it will encourage developers to write more about their work and that lead to knowledge  sharing among developers.

Proposed Mod Kafka

All

https://folio-project.slack.com/archives/CAQ7L02PP/p1714471592534689

Mike Taylor

Proposal. If and only if a FOLIO instance is running Kafka, it should insert and enable a module called mod-kafka, which consists entirely of a module descriptor that says it provides the interface kafka. The purpose is so that other modules can use the standard <IfInterface> and similar tools to determine whether they should attempt Kafka operations. Rationale: the FOLIO ILS depends absolutely on Kafka, but other uses of the platform will not. One such example: a dev platform that includes only mod-users, used as a source of change events for Metadb.