2022-11-23 Meeting notes

Tod Olson is next, followed by Ankita Sen 

All

No news.

No news.

All

TC Goals: next agenda item

Translation Subgroup: have received some needed information, need to collect into a document

Improving TCR process: planning to have two retrospectives, one for people outside of the process, one internally. Pausing, though, to allow for BugFest and the holidays

TC Charter revisions: Jenn Colt has taken ownership of this

ADR process improvements: 

• Changes to DR - DR-nnnnnn - < Decision Template>,
• updated format of Decision Log, can now sort and filter on different fields
• Included DR - FAQs section
• Outstanding question: how to consolidate previous tech leads decision log with this new process?
  • Have a plan to migrate old decisions to the new decision log format.
  • Did a pilot with one of the old decisions, DR-000005 - Platform agnostic object storage for Exports, settling on a process. When move from the old decision log, update tags on the decisions but leave the original document in place with comments and context. Record that it has been migrated in Migrated Decisions.

Tod Olson / Radhakrishnan Gopalakrishnan 

Previous:

Sounds like this subgroup might be ready to wrap up soon.  Allocating some extra time outside of the subgroup updates for them to present/shared deliverables, etc.

See Technical Council Goals & Objectives - DRAFT

Refining the objective and goals and getting feedback from the rest of the community. How to proceed and what are the next steps?

Agreed: Next step is to leave feedback about the Defined goals and objectives in the document's wiki comment section.

Tod Olson - Made a few changes. How would the TC like to proceed? Would they like to give feedback to the Subgroup's work or want the subgroup to meet again? Inline comments as feedback source should be fine. Having some inputs about priorities in the feedbacks is requested.

Craig McNally - Maybe a little bit of both should be done, feedback from the rest of the group and then refining a little more into which issues are more pressing than others. What the common goals are objective should be agreed on, insights from rest of the community needed. How to proceed?

Jenn Colt - Are these Goals and Objectives for the Technical Council or for FOLIO? Marc Johnson - How are they different from each other?

Jeremy Huff -Defining these will impact overall FOLIO processes. Also, which format shall the feedback on the working group's deliverables shall be provided with?

Marc Johnson - The next step should be TC members giving the working group deliverable valid feedbacks. Feedbacks welcome on the wiki comment section. 

Radhakrishnan Gopalakrishnan 

Previous:

• Tools/dependency versions - Radhakrishnan Gopalakrishnan took on this topic as a project. There is also a proposal Managing Tools/Framework Dependencies currently in Draft stage with feedbacks as latest as 02.08.2022.
• Radhakrishnan Gopalakrishnan advised that he was meeting with Marc Johnson on Friday to resolve outstanding questions and that this work should be ready for next week
• Radhakrishnan Gopalakrishnan - Need to review as group, get some feedback and close it. Version 1 was reviewed and certain things finalised but later discussion revealed a different approach was needed. Reviewed in today'S meeting for active feedback and discussion about the topic.
• Jeremy Huff - Concerns about the list of Officially Supported Technologies - this document was created for the new module technical evaluation , it was intended for another purpose so rolling it out into central processes might cause issue.
• Marc Johnson - Officially Supported Technologies is not a secondary document of this process, the point of the process is to have a list of things Folio as an application officially supports which is essentially like this exact document.. Radhakrishnan Gopalakrishnan agrees.
• Radhakrishnan Gopalakrishnan hard to get this done without having a separate meeting. Craig will send out a doodle poll for a separate meeting.

Today: 

• Craig McNally will send the doodle poll before next meeting (11/30)

Craig McNally 

From Kristin Martin in #tech-council:

Hello @here The work of the Functional Evaluation for new FOLIO Modules Group has completed and we are ready to share our work with the Councils for feedback, and hopefully a path for adoption. We have written an overview of the entire evaluation process here, in the document titled, “Evaluation Process for New FOLIO Modules.” This document, if approved, would become a wiki page under the Product Council space that covers the full evaluation workflow for new modules, under the current system of flower releases for FOLIO. Criteria for how the PC would evaluate modules is included in this document, which also links to the Technical Council’s technical review process. Finally the document provides a link to a proposed MOU for module contributors to sign. We would like to present this process to the three councils for discussion and welcome comments and feedback in the documents directly.

• Let's all take a look and familiarize ourselves with this.
• Kristin will be joining us on the 11/30 to present and discuss (allocating 30-40 minutes)

Mike Taylor is looking for "buy-in" from the TC on his proposed changes to mod-configuration. See Fixing the security problem in mod-configuration for proposal and Configuration and customization in FOLIO for context.

How do we evaluate this w/o considering the bigger picture (distributed configuration vs centralized configuration vs both)?

• Concern registered that this creates more confusion unless there is a concrete plan to migrate

He points out inconsistency in configuration APIs, does this proposal address that?

Is there a gap in our decision making processes?  There's sentiment that the RFC process is too "heavy".

• Seems like this is already a proto-RFC and this is exactly the sort of wide-reaching thing we would want to go through the RFC process.
• The off-putting thing is how long the RFC process takes.
• Points to the challenge of getting people to come to the TC for a decision when they are blocked. Effectively, a team needs to bring a proposal to TC one full release cycle before the work can be done.
• There's a wish to accelerate the process, but that seems optimistic.
• Impression is that he's most concerned about the time issue and ongoing effort that goes into the RFC process.
• Noting that under our current processes we cannot prevent him from making these changes and using them for himself.
• There does seem to be agreement that this is a concern, and that there are multiple reasons to get a handle on the configuration situation.
  • Was raised sometime earlier and discussed in core-platform, but was deprioritized for some reason. Unclear why.
• Does this conflict with an earlier decision, possibly undocumented, about moving toward distributed configuration?
• Possibly endorse tentatively, make changes to the API, and then go through RFC process.
  • Must be prepared to decide differently, that we might decide to move to distributed after all.
  • If long-term decision is to move to central configuration, then we need to coax people into migrating

Decision:

• Mike can go ahead with changes to mod-configuration if he needs in order to unblock his work
• TC is not formally approving the proposal at this time, but will move in parallel with an RFC process.
• TC needs someone to champion the RFC and shepherd it, does not need to be a current TC member but should be familiar with the RFC process. Have tentative volunteer but will revisit next week.
• Following RFC process, will need to socialize outcome with development teams.

Craig McNally /All

From Craig McNally in #tech-council:

This was brought to my attention earlier today...
https://blog.nlnetlabs.nl/open-source-software-vs-the-cyber-resilience-act/
While it's still just a proposal, I think FOLIO should keep an eye on, and maybe even try to get ahead of in anticipation of this.  I will add it to the agenda for next week's meeting.  This is a short read that does a decent job of laying it all out.  Please take a look prior to next Wednesday.  Thanks! 

• Have folks had a chance to read through any of this?
• What, if anything do we think the TC should do about this?
  • Raise awareness among other councils?
  • Seek legal advice in anticipation of this being passed?
  • Is there anything else we want to do to be more prepared for this in the event it does get passed?

Today:

Marc Johnson 

All / Maccabee Levine 

Last Week:

What, if anything should we do with the Decision log in the Technical Designs and Decisions wiki space?  Is it worth consolidating those decisions with the TC's ADRs?  Should we cross-reference?  Clarify the scope of these decisions, and whether or not decisions should still be made/logged here?  

See discussion in #tech-council for additional details.

• Craig McNally Decision log left when Tech Leads group fell apart with new governance structure.  Are decisions still made or logged in that space?  Where does this lie in the backlog.
• Maccabee Levine Motivations are to have a single list of decisions, to build developer-buy in and solve the longstanding issues with what decisions TC has authority to make.  Also to know what we have to keep updated vs archive.
• Craig McNally By consensus, added to the middle/bottom of the list.

Today:

Marc Johnson : Decision about Optimistic Locking: this is done. Optimisting locking can be used using the API. Bulk/Batch APIs especially for migration should use Optimistic concurrency control.

Tod Olson 

All / Ian Walls 

From last week:

• Ease of installing/deploying FOLIO - Ian Walls , Marc Johnson , Jeremy Huff
  •  Primary task the Tc would take on by making FOLIO easier to get up and running. Would also reduce AWS costs so that the money coming from Membership groups can be flowed to other aspects of FOLIO. Tc is the best equipped group to decide on how to make installing and deploying Folio easier and cheaper.
  • Craig McNally - Brainstorming open ended session with Ian Walls and then discuss further before or after WOLFcon depending on the brainstorming session. Ian Walls and Tod Olson to frame the topics of discussion for the brainstorming. 

Today:

• Probably defer, but keep on the agenda so we don't lose track of this...

All / Ian Walls 

Slack discussion:  Revisiting FOLIO Governance 

• • Ian Walls - should be best discussed in cross council meeting possibly at WOLFcon. Idea to was bring this up at a high community level not necessarily the Pc or TC. Doesn't need to be on TC agenda next week. Aspects to be discussed at WOLFcon.
  • See also:  messages to PC and CC council channels