Time/Place

Time: 11:00am Eastern Time (US)

Please see calendar invite for Zoom link.

Attendees

1. Raman Ganguly
2. Aaron Birkland
3. Rosalyn Metz
4. Mark Jordan
5. Melissa Anez
6. Jared Whiklo
7. Andrew Woods
8. Dan Coughlin
9. Jennifer Gilbert
10. weixuan
11. Ben Pennel
12. Tim Shearer
13. Bethany Seeger
14. Scott Prater
15. Tammy Wolf
16. Peter Winckles
17. Chris Awre
18. Este Pope

Agenda

1. State of Fedora 6 development
   1. Monthly sprints
   2. Progress towards F6 
   3. Community testing
2. Open development questions
   1. Fedora 6 and vanilla OCFL
      1. Do we value Fedora being able to run on top of vanilla OCFL? - in a read-only fashion? in a read/write fashion?
      2. Do we value a post-Fedora OCFL that is not peppered with Fedora-specific content?
      3. Example of Fedora-specific content
         1. Click here to expand...

            {"parent":"info:fedora/new",
            "id":"info:fedora/new/child",
            "interactionModel":"http://www.w3.org/ns/ldp#BasicContainer",
            "createdDate":"2020-04-21T16:52:42.757566Z",
            "lastModifiedDate":"2020-04-21T16:52:42.757566Z",
            "stateToken":"A1FAFA3B80B37AD8C1B0CC519ABD30A2",
            "archivalGroup":false,
            "objectRoot":true}
            
            # binaries have additional extras:
            ...
            "filename":"notes.txt",
            "mimeType":"text/plain",
            "contentSize":282,
            "digests":[],
            ...

3. Leadership updates
   1. Product Technology Subgroup

Notes

State of Fedora 6 Development

• This meeting is an opportunity to align our thinking along the lines of fcrepo6, make sure we're on the same page, open the door to pivoting if needed
• Priority is getting Fedora 6 out the door
  • Monthly sprints with focal points highly informed by state of application and item 1b: Progress towards f6
    • Green checkmarks = validated/verified.
    • Blue question marks:  validated by developer
• There has been a small core of regular contributors to the sprint.  For institutions that have not been able to contribute development effort:  is there any reason/blockers?
  • Q: Are you sending sprint progress reports to the tech list?  May this help drum up grassroots support
  • A: There are sprint summary videos that go out as appropriate.   We want to show progress, but don't want to demo half-baked features, though.
  • There are institutions that are fairly interested in fcrepo6, e.g. Northwestern University re: "Beyond the repository" interested in testing.  Michigan State interested in doing migration from f3 to f6.  Have eggs in f3 basket, but not a lot of resources.  Penn State has general interest in testing when f6 nears a 1.0 state.  Other institutions also interested when f6 near 1.0 as well.
    • Brown in a similar state, but has staff member Ben Cail who has been actively involved in calls, technical decisions, testing.  This has been quite valuable! 
  • For those who don't have capacity/time, is there anything we can do for engagement?
    • Maybe if there was a testing instance set up, so that institutional resources/setup aren't needed?
      • In a parallel fashion, David Wilcox & Danny Bernstein thinking about virtual workshops, using terraform to set up instances to use in a workshop.  Maybe some of the same techniques could be used for this?
      • Experience with cloud deployment itself can be valuable
  • Tech subcommittee also working on test plan for fcrepo6.  It would be ideal if this would run in parallel with fcrepo6 development.  If there's interest, we should channel the interest towards this test plan now vs when fcrepo6 is done.
  • A lot of people doing light lifting would be very helpful
  • For some features, if there are institutions particularly interested, it'd be helpful for those institutions to step in.  e.g. WebAC.  Some institutions use it, some don't.
  • Should this be kicked over to the communications group, to get the word out of where help/engagement is needed?  Rosalyn Metz happy to bring this conversation to that group.  
    • so far, focus of communications group has been increasing awareness of fedora 6 generally, so this new direction may be in good to take up.
  • Has documentation been keeping up with development?  There's interest from University of Wisconsin for helping there
    • Documentation has been a struggle.  There is a wiki space, but it lags due to limited capacity.
  • Tension of local projects vs community projects seems widespread.  
    • Some institutions have a task pool that any staff can participate in, this had a side effect of increasing documentation efficacy
      • Had success asking staff for concrete tasks, rather than open-ended tasks.  e.g. "create an object with an acl and try these tasks".  Someone needs to come up with concrete tasks, but there is an eager labor pool to do them.  
    • Islandora experience with test sprints tried to bring in testers who shudder at code, but eagerly perform concrete steps and provide useful feedback as long as the tasks and expected results are clear
    • Is there anybody interested in helping create concrete task pool for Fedora? 
      • Maybe Tim Shearer or Ben Pennell, but no promises
      • Scott Prater would be happy to be a foot soldier, but not the capacity to lead

Open Development Questions

• Is it valuable, from a community perspective, for Fedora to run on top of "vanilla" OCFL, vs OCFL that contains Fedora flavorings mixed in (i.e. requirements on content)?   Acknowledging that OCFL will last longer than Fedora, do we have an opinion on the fingerprint that Fedora leaves on OCFL objects, i.e. fedora-specific system metadata?
  • Rosalyn Metz:  OCFL doesn't care what an object looks like.  Fedora shouldn't worry about putting Fedora-specific metadata in, but Fedora should also not prohibit migrations from other OCFL systems by imposing requirements; there is value in handling vanilla OCFL.  If we can't take vanilla OCFL, we're saying "we're not a place you can come"
    • Being able to see a progression over an object through time and applications is useful.  Fedora doesn't need to read and totally understand, but it needs to do something useful at a basic level.
  • Dan Coughlin:  We should be able to import vanilla OCFL, or export OCFL.  Not sure if there are technical challenges, but OCFL lasting longer than Fedora does resonate.
  • Mark Jordon:  In the interest of mitigating vendor lock-in, we really should allow Fedora to run on top of OCFL and at least provide access to the content at some basic level.  That at least provides a platform for using the information.
  • Scott Prater: Distinction between importing Vanilla OCFL vs Running on top of vanilla OCFL.  OK with Fedora enriching Vanilla OCFL, and OK if Fedora is unable to export vanilla OCFL.  Other applications can ignore the Fedora parts.
    • Don't want to be constrained to "run on top of vanilla OCFL", if "can import" is enough
  • Andrew Woods:   Like the idea of rebuild vs import.   There are challenges with moving information around.  Like the idea of the content not needing to transform the data.  OCFL brings the possibility of stability-of-content.  Prefer rebuild over import, with minimal transformation.
    • Rosalyn Metz: To be able to just read is useful, even if Fedora can do nothing other than read.   Maybe action/transformation needed in order to do more with it, but basic reading is essential. 
• Several folks interested in a follow-up for this topic.  TODO;  Andrew Woodsschedule a follow-up meeting.

Action Items 

• David Wilcox add Fedora 6 delivery timeline topic to Feb. 4 Steering meeting
• Andrew Woods Danny Bernstein make a list of Fedora 6 development priorities with estimates on resource requirements (ideally before Feb. 4 Steering meeting)