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2026-01-12 Meeting Notes

2026-01-12 Meeting Notes

Attendees

  • @Tod Olson

  • @Maccabee Levine

  • @Julian Ladisch

  • @Christie Thomas

  • @Kevin Day

  • @Craig McNally

  • @Jenn Colt

  • @Jeff Gerhard

  • @Matt Weaver

  • @Wayne Schneider

  • @Olamide Kolawole

  • @VBar

  • @Ingolf Kuss

  • @Shelley Doljack

Time

Item

Who

Notes

Time

Item

Who

Notes

1 min

Scribe

 

@Maccabee Levine is followed by @Kevin Day

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

5 min

Upcoming Meetings

All

 

  • Jan 12, 2026 - Regular TC meeting

  • Jan 14, 2026 - Cancelled

  • Jan 19, 2026 - No meeting - MLK Day for some institutions

  • Jan 21, 2026 - Regular TC meeting (even though it’s Wednesday)

  • 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

    • 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

10 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.

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

  • Existing Module Criteria has been merged:https://github.com/folio-org/tech-council/pull/98/files

Selection of module reviewers for mod-ebsconet @Florian Gleixner +. @Ingolf Kuss
Select of module reviewer for ui-export-manager: @Shelley Doljack shadowed by @Maccabee Levine
Perform evaluation

10 min

Technical Council Sub-Groups Updates

All

Zero active subgroups

1 min

GitHub RFCs

Wiki RFCs

All

0 min

Decision Log

All

 

5 min

Officially Supported Technologies (OST)

Alls

Both Trillium and Umbrellaleaf need an update due to the delay:

  • @Julian Ladisch suggested we mark Trillium and Umbreallaleaf as DRAFT so can make expected changes and discuss.

  • @Jenn Colt Going backwards, but maybe we need to at this point? Spring only needs change?

  • @Julian Ladisch Kafka also.

  • @Craig McNally If we go back to draft (no precedent), we need new dates for other transitions as well. Easier for Umbrellaleaf since Trillium not even out yet.

  • @Kevin Day If these necessary changes are for security, those changes are still ok without moving back to draft.

  • @Jenn Colt But putting it through the process lets us work easier with the other groups for discussion.

  • @Wayne Schneider The big change (spring 4.1 for Trillium), will that be a real challenge for dev teams? If not, fine to just communicate.

  • @Kevin Day Spring has had some major changes in dot releases before.

  • @Jenn Colt Does it need discussion, or just announcement?

  • @Tod Olson If the developer burden is unclear to this group, then maybe discussion does have to happen.

  • @Jenn Colt Julian wrote a guide for migration to 4.0, is 4.1 that different?

  • @Julian Ladisch 4.1 scheduled for Umbrellaleaf so also already documented.

  • @Wayne Schneider Open tickets transitioning from Jenkins to GHA, work underway. Working this week with module owners. So much 4.0 work may not be done yet, so 4.1 change maybe not a problem.

  • @Jenn Colt Discuss this Wednesday? Or, how to come to consensus with dev teams? Or just looking for objections?

  • @Julian Ladisch Other option is to make the Trillium support period short (6m) and then an Umbrellaleaf release soon. But then quick migration to 4.0 and then 4.1, maybe better to do at once.

  • @Jenn Colt Usually we move through the stages and do not wait for feedback. If we are asking, how do we know we’ve gotten it?

  • @Charlotte Whitt Present at “FOLIO Release – weekly status review” meeting this Thursday 11am ET? 30m meeting. All dev teams present then.

  • @Jenn Colt Consensus to put Trillium back into draft?

    • Lots of thumbs up. No objections.

  • Jenn edited the doc.

    • Spring Boot 4.1

    • Kafka 4.2

  • @Jenn Colt Do we need ask FE folks about any updates due to delay? Open that door? Up to FE folks.

  • @Jenn Colt Any changes needed for API Gateway change?

    • @Craig McNally Would fall under fast-moving infrastructure section. But switching the software is different than an upgrade. No timing answer yet. Could be in Trillium timeframe.

    • @Maccabee Levine Would we have to move back to Draft if that happened?

    • @Craig McNally Could take care of that now by adding APISIX if that helps.

    • @Wayne Schneider Say planning to move to Eureka for Trillium at end of May, so planning it next 5m, and then two weeks before we could be changing out a major infra component like this, that would be a problem.

    • @Craig McNally Plan would be dual support for some period of time. Sysops may be able to begin testing, transition at own pace.

    • @Jenn Colt Then ok to leave page as-is for now, can add APISIX to both T and U pages when ready.

  • Umbrellaleaf back to draft?

    • It was moved to accepted long ago. Was scheduled at its release scope composition deadline. But those dates were updated, so it should legitimately be at draft now. New date to Accepted will be in March.

    • Moved back to DRAFT.

  • Consensus ok to post now to channels about Trillium.

NA

Zoom Chat

 

 

 

 



Topic Backlog

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.