Core Contributor News for Sprint: Dec 19th - Jan 2nd, 2026

Working Groups Core Contributors
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Core Contributor News for Sprint: Dec 19th - Jan 2nd, 2026

This sprint brought mostly positive experiences. 60% of participants rated their experience as good or great, while 40% reported a neutral experience or faced some challenges.

:tada: What are we celebrating?

@sameeramin

:sos_button: Who needs help?

@sameeramin

  • I’m just starting as an individual contributor and looking for ways to contribute to Open edX

:construction: What Pull Requests (PRs) need review?

As a CC, check for PRs that are stuck and need attention. Don’t have write access? No problem! You can still help by reviewing to move things forward. Ping Axim if there are issues merging after you review.

Below is a list of stalled PRs that need urgent attention. These are just some of the many PRs that require immediate review and action. In addition, there are several Draft PRs that need attention to move forward. Please take a moment to review and update them as needed so they don’t remain blocked. Thank you!

Stuck waiting for review

Draft PRs: Require review and updates to move forward:

Find a full list of PRs ready for review here, or focus on edx-platform PRs that need attention.

:memo: What are the Working Groups up to?

Working Group Latest Updates
BizDev No current updates available. Last meeting notes → 2025-11-12 Partnership development Meeting
Build-Test-Release (BTR) Ulmo.1 release preparation continues with active testing, documentation, and debugging work across all teams, while a security patch scheduled for Dec 16 remains the only notable blocker. Testing has progressed significantly, with 450 cases completed and key failures under review. The team is focused on finalizing new feature tests, resolving open issues, and ensuring readiness ahead of the Dec 18 cut. Last meeting notes → 2025-12-15 BTR Meeting Minutes
Governance WG The Governance Working Group formally transitioned to an async-first model, updating its charter and restructuring contributor documentation and workflows. Significant progress was made on PR management, metrics, and a notifications initiative, now being refocused to support site admins after TOC feedback. Several strategic efforts continue into 2026, including contributor onboarding improvements and the Partners-as-Maintainers framework. Last meeting notes → June-Nov 2025 - Activity - Governance WG
Core Product The meeting focused on two major items: reviewing the Enrollment Page Editor proposal, which was postponed again and will be revisited on December 16, and examining the RBAC (AuthZ) plans for Studio presented by Guillermo. Both topics aim to enhance course discoverability and strengthen permission management for course authoring. Further discussion and refinement are expected in upcoming sessions. Last meeting notes → 2025-12-16 Core Product Meeting Notes
Data No current updates available. Last meeting notes → 2025-08-20 Meeting notes
Deprecation The team reviewed progress on removing legacy Studio and LMS UI elements, including accepted tickets and cleanup of unused pages and temporary toggles. They discussed tracking and reducing feature toggles, proposing counts of annotated toggles and linting checks for new ones, with a baseline of 271 as of Teak. Next steps include checking the Ulmo delta, reviewing items in the Draft column, and potentially dedicating a meeting to address draft items in depth. Latest meeting notes → DEPR Meetings Notes (2025)
Documentation No current updates available. Last meeting notes → 2025-10-01 Docs WG
Educators No current updates available. Last meeting notes → 2025-11-10 Educators
Frontend The group reviewed Paragon’s successful move to OIDC-based releases, updating semantic-release and confirming secure, automated npm publishing. They discussed frontend-base release strategy, resolving npm “latest” tagging issues and aligning toward semantic-release automation for prereleases and future stable versions. A clear direction was set for runtime configuration, using a single server-generated JSON endpoint (via an edx-platform plugin) to configure frontend-base and MFEs, with work split between backend and frontend owners. Latest meeting notes → 2025-12-18 Frontend Working Group Meeting Notes
Large Instances No current updates available. Last meeting notes → Large Instances Meeting Notes 2025-10-28
Learning Tools (LTI) The Ulmo release testing sheet currently lacks meaningful LTI test coverage, and the group suggested reusing parts of the existing LTI Validation Test and reusable configuration docs to improve it. There is a known issue where LTI 1.3 launches fail when using reusable configuration (e.g., Turnitin), which still needs attention. On the LTI tool provider side, related work is on hold for now but will soon become a priority for Usman Younas. Latest meeting notes → 2025-11-25 Meeting notes
Maintenance The team discussed progress on Enterprise DEPRs, repository ownership, and maintainer expectations, with Usama Sadiq taking over maintainership of edx-repo-health and pytest-repo-health. A new Frontend Dependency Freeze ADR will guide consistent dependency versions across MFEs, while backend services remain out of scope. Upcoming technical work includes automated PRs to drop Django 4.2 and finalizing Python 3.12 support, which is expected to be backported into Ulmo. Latest meeting notes → 2025-12-11 Meeting notes
Marketing No current updates available. Last meeting notes →Agenda, Oct 14th, 2025
Mobile The team reviewed outcomes from the Dec 5 Mobile Roadmap exercise, aligning on next steps to expand ideas around Global Access and reassess the Learning in the Moment theme. Planned actions include deeper research and interviews, documenting improvements for offline downloads, and advancing roadmaps for mobile push notifications and mobile previews for web. Discussion centered on FY26 goals of mobile adoption, leveraging the mobile format, and gathering stronger input from users and pedagogy experts. Latest meeting notes →Agenda, Dec 19th, 2025
Technical Oversight Committee The TOC approved the final election slate, and conference planning continues with interest in adding student and instructor voices. A proposal for community-wide notifications raised concerns, leading to consensus that messages should target administrators—not learners. 2U’s shift to deploying from release branches sparked discussion on adopting smaller, more frequent releases to improve testing, upgrades, and overall reliability. Last meeting notes → TOC Meeting Notes - 2025-11-12
Translation No current updates available. Last meeting notes → 2025-11-19 Translation WG Meeting
Design The meeting closed with preparations for the Ulmo Test-a-thon, led by Sam Daitzman. Participants were encouraged to support release testing, with special attention to design-related test cases. The goal is to boost coverage and ensure the Ulmo release meets visual and UX quality standards. Last meeting notes → 2025-12-04 - Design Working Group Meeting

:date: What events are coming up?

  • We are excited to announce that Western Governors University (WGU) will be hosting the Open edX Conference 2026. May 19 – 22, 2026 • Salt Lake City, Utah

    • Register now and join the Open edX community in reimagining what’s possible in learning!

  • Join a working group meeting using the community calendar.

:rocket: What are we working on?

:handshake: Want to participate in Core Contributor Governance?

  • Participate to the work of the Contributor Coordination Working Group. The group works asynchronously using the working group tasks board, and we’d love your input there. You can review and comment on existing threads there, or post your own topic to discuss with the group by creating your own ticket on the board (“+ Add item” in “New topics and issues to discuss”).

:speech_balloon: Anything to add?

Share your thoughts in Slack (openedx.slack.com) or the comments below!