2024-11-18 Meeting notes

Owned by Craig McNally
Last updated: Nov 18, 2024 by Maccabee LevineVersion comment

Date

Attendees 

Discussion items

TimeItemWhoNotes
1 minScribeAll

Marc Johnson is next

Maccabee Levine will take notes today.

Reminder:  Please copy/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.

5-10 minLiaison Updates

Maccabee Levine

Tod Olson

Jakub Skoczen

Craig McNally

Jenn Colt 

1 minUpcoming MeetingsAll
  • - Dedicated discussion: Eureka timeline
  • - Regular TC meeting
  • - Dedicated discussion: Cancelled for American Thanksgiving
  •   - Regular TC Meeting
  •   - Dedicated discussion: New language adoption policy

Topics for dedicated discussions:

  • Voting rules (continued)?  
  • New language adoption policy?  
  • Eureka adoption (RFC, TCRs, etc.)
5-10 minTCR Board ReviewAll
  • TCR-44 - Getting issue details... STATUS
  • TCR-46 - Getting issue details... STATUS
    • Assigned to Maccabee Levine 
    • Maccabee Levine Started review, first time doing a backend module so getting an assist from Jeremy later this week.  No PC approval yet but scheduled for next month.  Possibly (not sure) another cross-module DB access TCR, so will help to have the RFC ready beforehand if possible.
  • TCR-47 - Getting issue details... STATUS
    • Presently assigned to Craig McNally, but need someone to collaborate with to avoid a potential COI
    • Julian Ladisch offered to collaborate on it
  • TCR-48 - Getting issue details... STATUS
    • Assigned to Tod Olson, but it sounds like he may not have bandwidth... skip to Jenn Colt? 
    • From Tod:  "I will be out of the office the next two weeks, and won't be able to look at anything before December. By way of setting parameters. If this need quicker action, it should go to someone else."
    • Jenn Colt took this one
  • TCR-49 - Getting issue details... STATUS
5 min

Technical Council Sub-Groups Updates


Static Code Analysis

  • Ingolf Kuss They did meet.  One question about how to do static code analysis for Go; Mike Taylor explained that GitHub Actions can do so.
  • Marc Johnson This is likely needed for mod-reporting review.  Has the group found consensus about having specialized language policies?  (Ingolf: No, still disagreement.)
  • Craig McNally See how the conversation goes Monday, if we can make a decision.
  • Ingolf Kuss Schedule next check-in for two weeks.

Developer Documentation

  • Upcoming meeting about dev advocate as a whole.  Jenn Colt waiting to hear from Jeremy about the subgroup as a whole

Reference Data Upgrades

  • Have to discuss separately to see if someone will take it on.
1 min

GitHub RFCs

Wiki RFCs

All

I don't think there's anything to discuss here.

Reminder to formally close the Go language RFC

Marc Johnson Worth discussing whether we want to invite process changes at any time (like some of Julian Ladisch's suggestions) or only after a TCR.

1 minDecision LogAll

Nothing new here.

5 min

Officially Supported Technologies (OST)

All

Check Recurring Calendar...

1 minTC member changesAll
*Voting RulesAll

Are we able to make a decision?  There were two things we wanted to make a decision on today:

  1. Moving from "majority of members" to "majority of votes"
  2. Whether we want to allow slack voting
    1. There are still some open questions about when slack voting would be used...  Is this right?
      1. Lazy Consensus → Zoom vote
        1. if someone requests a vote
      2. Zoom vote → Slack vote
        1. if there aren't enough votes to make a decision?
        2. If margin is very close (something passing by as few as 4 votes)?
    2. Benefits:
      1. Slack voting allows members who were not present to factor into the decision
      2. It could help in cases where there are not enough members present (after abstentions) to make a decision
    3. Concerns:
      1. This has the potential to slow things down.  E.g. decisions on TCRs often happen right against the deadline.  Introducing further delays is likely to cause a lot of frustration.
      2. There's no guarantee that this will help in cases where there are not enough members present (after abstentions) to make a decision.  So now we've just delayed the decision, only to find that we still cannot make one.
      3. Could be perceived that attending meetings is less important as critical votes will happen in slack.
  • Craig McNally Conditions on when it would go to slack vote?
    • Ingolf Kuss If not enough votes to make a decision.
    • Jenn Colt PC essentially always goes to Slack.  Could be unfair if we sometimes go to Slack rather than being consistent.
    • Craig McNally As noted in concerns, going to Slack can delay the decision by another week.
    • Ingolf Kuss There was the idea that all three councils should have the same voting rules.
      • Craig McNally Disagree with having the same rules, TC has time sensitivity to some decisions.  Was also not clear if CC and PC had the same rules (we only had PC rules for reference).
      • Marc Johnson CC never formally voted.  We could go in line with another council's method, but TC can't decide alone that everyone should decide the same way
      • Maccabee Levine.  I think CC never had a no vote as long as I've been liaison.  Also the charters recognize that councils can make their own procedures.
    • Florian Gleixner Why moving to 'majority of votes'?
      • Craig McNally Simpler majority of votes.
      • Florian Gleixner So a 4-2 vote would pass if we make this change.  If we say yes to this, then don't need a slack vote.
      • Craig McNally Need six votes cast (not including abstentions) to make a decision.
      • Jakub Skoczen 'Quorum' count should include abstentions.  Abstentions count as a 'no' vote.
      • Maccabee Levine I disagree that abstentions would count as 'no' votes.  That would mean 2 in favor, 1 against and 2 abstentions would mean that 'no' wins.
      • Jenn Colt There is no way to take abstentions and then add them to the 'no'.  You can say that a simple majority is just more 'yes'es than 'no's.
    • Ingolf Kuss At the moment, we need 6 'yes' votes to pass.  That's why we want to change it.  Also, PC rules say PC members can abstain, and an abstention does not count as a vote, so can lead to situation where you don't have a quorum anymore.
      • Marc Johnson That is different than Jakub's proposal.  For a vote to take place, 6 eligible voters must be present.  Completely separate that from whether the vote can be valid.  Also say that all votes require a minimum of six active votes (not including abstentions), then you look at a simple majority.  Voting methods around the world are not consistent, so comparisons are difficult.
    • Jakub Skoczen We can of course increase the number of members we require to be present.  Benefit of doing that is then we can decide whether to take the vote or not more quickly.  Easy fix.
      • Jenn Colt If we have 6 present but only 5 vote, does the vote count?
      • Marc Johnson Would be an invalid vote, because less than the min number of active votes would be cast.
    • Jakub Skoczen At the end of the day, goal is to get most of the active TC members to express their opinion.  Abstention is a form of expression.  Not the same as being missing from the meeting and not able to express themselves.
    • Craig McNally Not able to make a decision today.  Written examples easier to work through.  He and Jenn will put some together.


NAZoom Chat


00:14:43	Ingolf Kuss:	https://github.com/folio-org/.github/blob/master/.github/workflows/go-lint.yml
00:18:49	Jakub:	Will do
00:20:46	Marc Johnson:	When we include that on the agenda, please can we also include a topic about when to change the module review policies (previously it’s been by recommendation by a sub group)
00:33:33	Ingolf Kuss:	I think we agreed that an abstention is the same as "not voting".
00:33:41	Craig McNally:	Reacted to "I think we agreed th..." with 👍
00:39:43	vbar:	What if you don’t allow abstention?
00:39:57	Charlotte:	Reacted to "What if you don’t al..." with 👍
00:40:29	Charlotte:	Yes, I agree Vince. If you are an elected member of the Council, then you should be able to vote Yes or No
00:41:39	Craig McNally:	I posed that question last week.  There's no way to force someone to vote
00:41:53	Ingolf Kuss:	Reacted to "I posed that questio..." with 👍
00:42:47	vbar:	If you are present and choose not to vote you become absent. So in your example 11 people with 10 abstention => 10 absent, 1 present, no quorum
00:42:56	Jenn Colt:	It would pass in that case
00:43:00	Jenn Colt:	They don’t
00:43:56	Jenn Colt:	an instance of declining to vote for or against a proposal or motion.
"a resolution passed by 126 votes to none, with six abstentions"
00:44:51	Jenn Colt:	You don’t just add the abstentions to one or the other
00:45:07	Jenn Colt:	It’s not
00:46:11	Maccabee Levine:	I agree with Jenn.
00:46:31	vbar:	An abstention is just a decision to not participate in the vote. The same as being absent. Therefore reducing the quorum
00:46:44	Craig McNally:	Reacted to "An abstention is jus..." with 👍
00:46:48	Ingolf Kuss:	Reacted to "An abstention is jus..." with 👍
00:46:49	Florian Gleixner:	Usually abstentions should not count for majority calculations. "Simple majority" is defied that way.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majority#Voting_basis
00:46:54	Maccabee Levine:	Reacted to "Usually abstentions ..." with 👍🏻
00:46:59	Ingolf Kuss:	Reacted to "Usually abstentions ..." with 👍🏻
00:47:37	vbar:	You only require 4 votes
00:47:55	vbar:	Quorum is 6, majority of which is 4
00:48:50	Ingolf Kuss:	https://folio-org.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/PC/overview
00:49:20	Marc Johnson:	Reacted to "Quorum is 6, majorit…" with 👍
00:49:26	Florian Gleixner:	For Slack voting we could speedup these if we decide, that if a simple majority is reached, the voting will end. So when 5 people vote for No and 2 people abstain, the we have a simple majority for No. This could happen in some hours and we do not have to wait a full week
00:49:45	Charlotte:	Can I suggest to do a write up examples - that might make this much clearer for everyone - and also help everyone to agree around the rules
00:49:54	Craig McNally:	Reacted to "Can I suggest to do ..." with 👍
00:49:55	vbar:	Define quorum as the number who voted, not just the number present.
00:50:18	Ingolf Kuss:	Reacted to "For Slack voting we ..." with 👍
00:50:22	Florian Gleixner:	We should decide about new written down voting rules
00:52:06	Jenn Colt:	That was the original but I think that conflicts with what Jakub was saying
00:52:08	Jenn Colt:	??
00:52:47	Charlotte:	Reacted to "Define quorum as the..." with 👍
00:54:52	Ingolf Kuss:	++ Marc
00:54:57	Maccabee Levine:	Reacted to "++ Marc" with 👍🏻
00:55:49	Marc Johnson:	6 is our current magic number (it happens to be majority of council members)
00:56:07	Marc Johnson:	Reacted to "Define quorum as the…" with 👍
00:56:20	Ingolf Kuss:	Also, in a democratic election, there can be invalid votes (someone makes crosses on all candidates etc.). Those don't count and have the same effect as an abstantion.
00:56:25	Maccabee Levine:	I like Jakub's idea to raise the number who should be present.
00:56:45	Marc Johnson:	Reacted to "I like Jakub's idea …" with 👍
00:56:56	Florian Gleixner:	If only the majority of the (minimum 6) present members count, this means in fact, non-presentr members abstain.
00:57:09	Marc Johnson:	Replying to "I like Jakub's idea …"
Number who should be present or number who voted?
00:57:22	Marc Johnson:	Replying to "I like Jakub's idea …"
(Abstentions don’t count as voting)
00:57:32	Ingolf Kuss:	no
00:57:54	Florian Gleixner:	Replying to "I like Jakub's idea ..."

this is not clear to me
00:59:08	Ingolf Kuss:	Reacted to "If only the majority..." with 👍
01:00:32	Jenn Colt:	The easiest way to optimize for the most votes is just Slack unfortunately
01:00:40	Marc Johnson:	Reacted to "The easiest way to o…" with 👍
01:00:45	Maccabee Levine:	Reacted to "The easiest way to o..." with 👍
01:01:07	Marc Johnson:	Reacted to "Can I suggest to do …" with 👍
01:01:19	Florian Gleixner:	I would prefer simple majority counting all members present or not. So the decision is made, whenever you have > 50% of the votes for yes or no wehere abstains are substracted from the total number of members
01:01:56	Marc Johnson:	Replying to "That was the origina…"
You were right, I thought I had reflected an agreement and I hadn’t (because I misunderstood Jakub’s stance)
01:02:06	Maccabee Levine:	Reacted to "That was the origina..." with 👍🏻
01:02:18	Ingolf Kuss:	Replying to "That was the origina..."

yes, that is the original proposal. Whenever there is still a Quorum.
01:02:52	vbar:	Abstaining to make a political point is a luxury. If have 11 present and 3 abstain, fine it doesn’t reduce the quorum. But if thee attendance is low and some start abstaining that is not productive, they might as well not be there.


Topic Backlog

Decision Log ReviewAll

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

Translation SubgroupAllSince we're having trouble finding volunteers for a subgroup, maybe we can make progress during a dedicated discussion session?
Communicating Breaking ChangesAll

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 - UpkeepAll

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 VisibilityAll

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 modulesAll

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 TemplatesAll

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 KafkaAll

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.