This is the recap from the meeting on 2021-11-16.
Topics discussed
Working groups
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Marketing — 00:01:49
Some additional information about the Open edX December virtual event were shared, which will be covered below.
The marketing working group is also working on feature comparison with Moodle and is inviting anyone who has experience with that to join in and collaborate.
The marketing working group will hopefully, soon, start posting asynchronous updates about their work on Discourse or Confluence.
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Release — 00:04:0 6
The BTR working group has started testing Maple and is encouraging all community members who have the chance to test Maple as well.
If you’re using a feature in the Open edX platform that isn’t commonly used, please be sure to contribute in testing the Maple release for said feature(s).
@regis has already provided members with the steps, docs, and links needed to test Maple using Tutor.
A few issues have already been reported, and need volunteers to help fix them. These issues are low hanging fruits and good first issues for anyone to get started with.
So if you’d like to contribute to the BTR working group, please head over to: [
Maple]: Issues that need some love. -
Frontend — 00:07:56
Two main projects are being worked on at the moment, which are the Node.js 16 upgrade and the removal of IE 11 support.
Some pull requests are being submitted for the Node.js 16 upgrade.
The JavaScript bundle sizes will be reduced thanks to the IE 11 support removal. The removal should be smooth because barely anyone was using IE 11 already.
It seems like there’s a lot of task overlap between the Frontend and the BTR working groups, lately.
There are also efforts done towards asking edX engineers to transition to the public frontend working group meetings instead of utilizing the weekly internal meeting. This would increase the attendance of edX engineers in the public frontend working group and the community’s collaboration with them, hopefully.
More information can be found on “FWG Meetup 2021-11-16”.
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Core Contributors — 00:10:54
The acquisition is taking place and some consideration is needed towards how the progress is being run. Some internal conversations are being held at the moment with the team at 2U.
There are 17 core contributors in the program. All core contributors will reserve their rights; however, there are plans for revamping the Champions model which currently in place.
The program is continuing to grow, as @ali_hugo will be the first UX Core Contributor. Congratulations!
In addition, more discussions are in place to add the first Product Management Core Contributor to the program.Both UX and Product Management Core Contributors are expected to work more closely with the edX and 2U team(s) than others.
There are concerns regarding edX engineers losing access to the repositories after the acquisition. However, there are planned internal discussions regarding possibly extending the Core Contributor program to edX engineers. More information about this will hopefully be provided in upcoming meetups.
Some questions were raised regarding how core contributors, or any community member, can contribute high value work and receive quick reviews/responses on their pull requests. @sarina recommends targeting BTR board for open issues, such as the Maple issues, to contribute significantly. Issues on the BTR board and related to releases are usually more urgent and would receive quicker feedback than other issues.
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Data — 00:22:42
There aren’t any updates regarding the Data working group because the meetup has been shifted to November 18.
The data working group will still be discussing the ElasticSearch vs OpenSearch issue.
Anyone interested in the discussion is encouraged to participate in the meetup. The meetup’s link and exact time can be found in this thread.
Events
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Open edX Virtual Event in December - 00:01:49
The next Open edX Virtual Event is Tuesday December 14th. A handful of talks will be held in Gather during the 3 hour long event.
The event will be announced soon by the marketing working group, so members can share the event and save the date.
The virtual event will also include a talk, by @e0d, regarding the acquisition.
Projects
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Core Contributors Sprints — 00:24:15
@antoviaque has reached out to core contributors initiating a conversation with the core contributors to participate with their perspectives in the topic.
More replies are needed in order to form a better overview regarding the core contributors’ perspectives. So, if you’re a core contributor and you haven’t had the chance to participate yet, please don’t hesitate to share your opinions and ask your colleague core contributors to participate as well.
Having some participation from the edX side, as well, would be insightful and greatly appreciated.After the acquisition, it would be a good opportunity to get edX engineers to be more involved in open source initiatives. It’s a challenge to introduce such an initiative, especially with the large responsibilities the edX engineers have. However, increasing their involvement with working groups and possibly core contributor sprints would have a large impact on the community and the core contributor program.
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edX Brandings Backlog — 00:40:00
In some places in the platform and plugins, there are edX brandings/strings which exist and should be removed.
Previously, there were discussions of creating a backlog where these issues can be collected. However, it seems like the BTR working group backlog already contains a significant number of these issues. Similarly, the Frontend working group contains some as well.
Accordingly, a third backlog will not be created, since the previously mentioned working groups are already utilizing their backlogs to capture and resolve these issues, whenever appropriate.Mechanisms should be in place for capturing such cases, where the specific branding is leaked into the project. These solutions are difficult to implement on the community’s end. Although, some measures need to be taken on edX’s end instead, linting was proposed in order to identify easy cases and prevent merging such leaks.
Product Management Core Contributors would have a lot to offer on that front once they start working with edX Product Managers, because they could raise awareness about the issue.
@djoy is working on an OEP around MFE customization, where specific mechanisms would be outlined to provide a better idea on how some customization should happen. Once the OEP is ready, it would act as a reference for people who are maintaining the platform and continuing to add extension points. This would ensure things are done in the right way and would help reduce any edX specific branding or business logic.
If there’s any any branding you notice that shouldn’t be there, please create an issue in the BTR working group or the Frontend working group, depending on what is more appropriate, to raise point it out…
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Django 3.2 upgrade — 00:51:49
However, this project has been considered to be complete.
From a community perspective, there are interests in knowing how many issues where tackled by people outside of edX. There are no updates on that front yet.
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Node.js 16 — 00:53:40
No significant updates.
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Django Backend APIs: Django Signal Events, Django Filters — 00:53:57
More internal work is being done on Django Filters. There is progress, but nothing significant at the moment.
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xAPI/Caliper, OEP-26 — 00:54:30
No updates.
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MySQL instead of MongoDB — 00:54:46
Maple won’t have any changes to MongoDB. The removal of MongoDB and utilization of MySQL are expected to be in Nutmeg, however.
The first pull request has been merged. There are two additional pull requests that need to be merged to successfully finalize the first stage of the MongoDB removal, one of which will be merged soon.
@dave is providing asynchronous updates regarding the removal of MongoDB on this discourse thread in case you’re interested in following up on this topic.
Video Recording
The chat log can be found on the meeting’s agenda.
Participants
@Andres.Aulasneo
@antoviaque
@BbrSofiane
@dave
@djoy
@e0d
@Felipe
@ghassan
@idegtiarov
@marcotuts
@nedbat
@nizar
@regis
@sarina
Next meetup
Tuesday November 30th at 15:00 UTC (Timezone converter).
Details and draft agenda on the Github board.