2023-11-27 Meeting notes

 Jeremy Huff if next, followed by Marc Johnson 

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.

All

Maccabee Levine Tod Olson  Jakub Skoczen  Craig McNally Jenn Colt 

• CC: Maccabee Levine
  • Open source licensing audit update
    • Christopher Spalding discussed with OLF attorneys.  They have not previously worked to audit licenses.  Offered to do that research for us at an hourly rate.  Suggested that they engage with other communities they work with, but Chris asked them not to do so pending further CC discussion.
    • Lars Iking (UB Mainz, invited to CC meeting by Marko Knepper) works on copyright / IP issues.  Happy to offer support by looking at the different licenses, maybe put together a accept/rejects list as basis for work.
    • TC should reach out to Lars.  First to provide lists (tools) we've been working with.  Then to discuss more broadly.
    • Jen has been in email contact with the OLF attorney, and they have said they can give Jen a list, and Jen is looking to set up a meeting time. More on this may be added during the TCR updates.
    • Jen will continue to be point person on this
  • Index Data pulling back from some system administration tasks by March 1, 2024.
    • Christopher Spalding will raise with OLF.
    • Discussed scheduling the transition given limited timeframe.  Discussed that some of the items are non-technical, and a TAMU person used to help with some of them.
    • There is no request specifically for the TC to get involved
  • Developer Advocate
    • CC passed the job ad asynchronously.  Mike taking forward with the rest of the group that will lead the recruiting.
    • The PD is available in a google doc and a link will be provided
• PC: Tod Olson
  • No meeting, Thanksgiving holiday (U.S.).
• RMS Group: Jakub Skoczen
  • No updates
• Security Team: Craig McNally
  
  • No update this week
• Tri-council Application Formalization: Jenn Colt 
  • No meeting this week
  • The charter is neering completion and Jen asked for comments from the TC

All

Quick updates only.  If we can't find volunteers for groups, we'll need to add the topic to our backlog and address it during dedicated discussion sessions.

• Communicating Breaking Changes - Still having trouble finding volunteers.  Let's use a Wednesday session - 03 Jan 2024 or 10 Jan 2024
  • Push to January because of the holidays and Ankita Sen will be out in December
• Distributed VS Centralized configuration - There was a meeting and RFC PR was created. Next week there will be another checkin
• Transaltion Sub Group - No volunteers are forthcoming. The FOLIO Chairs were approached to try to find volunteers
• TCR Process Improvements - The Sub Group is working through Matt Weaver 's comments and they are scheduled to address the TCR process around exceptions

Previous Notes:

• DR-000038 - PostgreSQL Upgrade to 16 created by Julian Ladisch . Detailed analysis has been done to check if any of the breaking changes will impact FOLIO. There are a couple of unknowns, where it can't be easily verified if FOLIO is affected.

Today:

• DR-000038 has been updated to Postgres 12 for Poppy Quesnelia and Postgres 16 for Ramsons...
• DR-000038 has been updated with the Postgres 13, 14, 15 and 16 module test results of the 35 biggest modules that access the database, FOLIO has 60 database accessing modules. Not a single issue has been found.
  • This is in reference to the test container
  • Taras Spashchenko says this should be completed by the end of this month
  • We are aiming for upgrading at least to 13 in the Q release and then to 16 in the R release
  • We have been planning on making a formal decision on this topic during this meeting
  • Julian expresses objection to this plan, as discussed int he DR, it will create extra work. The proposal is to keep version 12 and to make the Q release compatible to that the upgrade can happen latter on.
    • This proposal is that the Q release is compatible with versions 12-16, and that DevOps can change versions at anytime prior to the November 2024 loss of support for version 12
    • Craig McNally points out that this plan seem to be dependent on there being no code changes necessary for this upgrade path
    • Marc Johnson asked for clarifications, Julian Ladisch  clarifies that officially we would support 12 and 16, and that the intermediate version should be implicitly supported.
    • Ingolf Kuss asks if there are no code changes for version 13 why don't we go to 13 right away
    • Julian Ladisch points out that there will be test code changes will be needed and that this will require two upgrades, 12-13 and then 13-16
    • Tod Olson asks for clarification, the proposal will officially support 12 in the Q release, and that 16 will be tested but not officially supported, and then we will move the version as far forward as we can for the R release
    • Florian Gleixner says that the jump from 12 to 16 is good for sysops because it is fewer database upgrades. He also feels that we need one release that supports multiple versions, and sees benefits to the developers
    • Marc Johnson mentions that supporting 4 versions seems like a stretch
    • Julian Ladisch for migration of tenants you need to support multiple versions
    • Marc Johnson Feels that this DR seems to have a very wide scope
    • Craig McNally we should make a decision about the Q release and we may need a formal vote. Do we move to 13 in the Q release or leave it 12
    • The nays carried the vote, which was interpreted as implicitly an approval of the DR
    • Marc Johnson did not feel that this vote was an implicit approval of the DR
    • Craig McNally did folks feel that they were voting on the implicit acceptance of the DR
    • Jeremy Huff did feel that he was voting on the implicit acceptance of the DR
    • Marc Johnson Dislikes the idea of voting "no" on one thing is the same as voting "yes" on another
    • The DR was approved and the Q release will support 12 and 16, though it should be noted that to do this, not all features from 16 will be supported
    • Craig McNally this option will leave it up to the system operators to decide when to upgrade 
    • Tod Olson felt that the vote was to leave the officially supported version for the Q release at 12 and that there would be a separate vote for the R relase
    • Craig McNally Since two people have raised this concern let's have a separate vote for the R release
    • The current vote indicates that the Q release will officially support version 12 of Postgres
    • Marc Johnson if people want to run on a latter version of Postgres then what we officially support they can do that
    • Tod Olson part of the goal is to minimize the work of the project's operations team, he would like to see an option in place that would allow for bugs in version 13 to be addressed
    •   Julian Ladisch points out that if there was a bug in 13 it would likely be in 16 as well, and would be addressed because of that
    • Marc Johnson points out that we have not decided to support 16
    • Craig McNally Vote number 2 is what version we want to run in release R? Maybe we should wait until next week to make this decision
    • Marc Johnson we are not going to sign off on the approved technology list in the remaining time of the meeting, and he points out that we will support an unsupported version of Postgres for the entirety of the Q release cycle
    • Florian Gleixner Postgres 16 support could be declared for a specific hotfix release
    •  Craig McNally this would be a new approach
    • Time on the meeting, and this will need to be discussed next time (Monday)

• 29 Nov 2023 - Topic TBD
• 04 Dec 2023 - Regular TC meeting
• ...
• 02 Jan 2024 - Chairs Meeting (Tentative)

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.

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.