Open edX Contributors Meetup

Working Groups Contributor Coordination
62

Sorry for not being able to attend this morning. I just finished reviewing the recording. I probably watched the last 15 minutes at least 3 times.

I need to explain a few things.

With regards to ecommerce and the Payment MFE. Because of political / institutional decisions, we had to develop our own payment processor connector for Netbanx / Paysafe way back in 2016 and install it as part of our fork for ecommerce. Of course, there were slight modifications to edx-platform, but nothing serious. I also have to point out that we do not use the edX basket because our implementation of Netbanx / Paysafe uses an hosted payment page. So, all credit card information is entered on the hosted payment page and the PCI component of the equation rests at Netbanx / Paysafe.

When I first tried lilac.master, the Payment MFE was still not available for the native installation. Since I was afraid that something wrong could happen, call it a hunch, I went ahead to see if the code was really deprecated between Koa and Lilac.

The first thing I really noticed were the calls to the new Profile MFE to see what is the state of a user’s identity validation. Going from there I was able to reverse engineer the calls and determine where I would need to change a line of code here and a line of code there to call ecommerce as usual and used the code we developed for Netbanx / Paysafe way back in 2016. The code was adapted from the code of the cybersource connector. We even adapted it to Python 3 when Python 3 was introduced into Open edX.

When I said there were 31 files to modify, those are 31 files in Lilac. Everything worked fine before Lilac. Sometimes I needed to change a line or two. Sometimes I need to reintroduce code that was removed from Lilac or even make sure the number of parameters on specific functions. It was a long evening. A lot of trials and errors.

In the end, I was able to change things so that I could still use the same behavior we had before Lilac but of course that now makes my Lilac fork absolutely incompatible with the Payment MFE. There would need to be a lot of additional code changes to make it a choice between using the old behavior or using the new Payment MFE behavior. Remember what I said about reusing functions from Koa and some functions not having the same number of parameters between Koa and Lilac. It really was an exercise in hacking the code.

I could point you to the 3 big commits I made in our fork to make the payment workflow work for us. I was waiting to revert those 3 commits in order to test the new Payment MFE. Those 3 commits allowed me to test everything else in our fork with Lilac without having to wait for the sudden appearance of the MFEs in the native installation. Finding out today that I cannot use the Payment MFE because I am not using Cybersource, Paypal or Stripe, well that is disappointing to say the least.

For the moment, I could go as is with Lilac and bite the bullet with my modifications until I can find a solution or we can find a solution as a community for all other payment processors. I am just worried there will be so much changes between Lilac and Maple that even rebasing my fork with maple.master will be an adventure in itself.

If you need more information or if you have comments, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Regards,
Pierre

2 Likes
63

This is the recap from the meeting on 2021-06-01.

Video Recording

Participants

@BbrSofiane
@arbrandes
@antoviaque
@nedbat
@sarina
@pdpinch
@nimisha
@sambapete
@Felipe

(Zoom doesn’t insert placeholders for videoless participants in the gallery recording. If you’re not on this list, this is why. Feel free to correct me!)

Topics

Details and chat logs on this meeting’s agenda.

Next meetup: Tuesday June 15th at 15:00 UTC (Timezone converter)

Details and draft agenda on the Github board.

1 Like
64

This is the recap from the meeting on 2021-06-15.

Video Recording

Participants

@BbrSofiane
@arbrandes
@antoviaque
@nedbat
@sarina
@nimisha
@Felipe
@regis
@djoy

(Zoom doesn’t insert placeholders for videoless participants in the gallery recording. If you’re not on this list, this is why. Feel free to correct me!)

Topics

Details and chat logs on this meeting’s agenda.

Next meetup: Tuesday June 29th at 15:00 UTC (Timezone converter)

Details and draft agenda on the Github board.

1 Like
65

This is the recap from the meeting on 2021-06-29.

Video Recording

Participants

@jpb
@Fox_Piacenti
@BbrSofiane
@pdpinch
@antoviaque
@nedbat
@e0d
@juancamilom
@sarina
@nimisha
@Felipe
@regis
@djoy
@adzuci
@arbrandes
@dave
@natea
@marcotuts

(Zoom doesn’t insert placeholders for videoless participants in the gallery recording. If you’re not on this list, this is probably why. Feel free to correct me!)

Topics

This one was entirely dedicated to the 2U edX acquisition.

Details and chat logs on this meeting’s agenda.

Next meetup: Tuesday July 13th at 15:00 UTC (Timezone converter)

Details and draft agenda on the Github board.

2 Likes
66

This is the recap from the meeting on 2021-07-13.

Video Recording

Participants

@BbrSofiane
@pdpinch
@nedbat
@e0d
@sarina
@nimisha
@regis
@sambapete
@arbrandes
@Achim
@Andres.Aulasneo
@idegtiarov
Lou Cicchese

(Zoom doesn’t insert placeholders for videoless participants in the gallery recording. If you’re not on this list, this is probably why. Feel free to correct me!)

Topics

Details and chat logs on this meeting’s agenda.

Next meetup: Tuesday July 27th at 15:00 UTC (Timezone converter)

Details and draft agenda on the Github board.

2 Likes
67

This is the recap from the meeting on 2021-07-27.

Video Recording

Participants

@e0d
@sambapete
@nedbat
@arbrandes
@antoviaque
@nimisha
@BbrSofiane
@jmbowman
@pdpinch
@nberdnikov
@Felipe
@cmltaWt0
Lou Cicchese

(Zoom doesn’t insert placeholders for videoless participants in the gallery recording. If you’re not on this list, this is probably why. Feel free to correct me!)

Topics

Details and chat logs on this meeting’s agenda.

Next meetup: Tuesday August 10th at 15:00 UTC (Timezone converter)

Details and draft agenda on the Github board.

1 Like
68

This is the recap from the meeting on 2021-08-10.

Video Recording

Participants

@sambapete
@nedbat
@arbrandes
@nimisha
@BbrSofiane
@pdpinch
@cmltaWt0
@xitij2000
@jalondonot
@regis
@djoy
@sarina
@lpm0073

(Zoom doesn’t insert placeholders for videoless participants in the gallery recording. If you’re not on this list, this is probably why. Feel free to correct me!)

Topics

Details and chat logs on this meeting’s agenda.

Next meetup: Tuesday August 24th at 15:00 UTC (Timezone converter)

Details and draft agenda on the Github board.

69

This is the recap from the meeting on 2021-08-24.

Video Recording

Participants

@nedbat
@arbrandes
@nimisha
@djoy
@Felipe
@sambapete
@e0d
@sarina

(Zoom doesn’t insert placeholders for videoless participants in the gallery recording. If you’re not on this list, this is probably why. Feel free to correct me!)

Topics

Details and chat logs on this meeting’s agenda.

Next meetup: Tuesday September 7th at 15:00 UTC (Timezone converter)

Details and draft agenda on the Github board.

70

This is the recap from the meeting on 2021-09-07.

Video Recording

Participants

@nedbat
@arbrandes
@nimisha
@Felipe
@sambapete
@sarina
@marcotuts
@regis
@jalondonot
@pdpinch
@ghassan
@BbrSofiane

Topics discussed

Working group updates

Events

Ongoing projects

More details, including the chat log, on this meeting’s agenda.

Next meetup

Tuesday September 21st at 15:00 UTC (Timezone converter).

Details and draft agenda on the Github board.

71

This is the recap from the meeting on 2021-09-21.

Video Recording

Participants

@nedbat
@arbrandes
@nimisha
@Felipe
@sarina
@jalondonot
@pdpinch
@BbrSofiane
@braden
@djoy
@dave
@e0d
@idegtiarov
@antoviaque

Topics discussed

Working group updates

Events

New or Ongoing projects

More details, including the chat log, on this meeting’s agenda.

Next meetup

Tuesday October 5th at 15:00 UTC (Timezone converter).

Details and draft agenda on the Github board.

72

This is the recap from the meeting on 2021-10-05.

Video Recording

Participants

@Andres.Aulasneo
@antoviaque
@arbrandes
@BbrSofiane
@dave
@djoy
@e0d
@Felipe
@ghassan
@idegtiarov
@nedbat
@nizar
@pdpinch
@sarina
@Zia_Fazal

Topics discussed

Working group updates

Events

N/A

New or Ongoing projects

More details, including the chat log, on this meeting’s agenda .

Next meetup

Tuesday October 19th at 15:00 UTC (Timezone converter).

Details and draft agenda on the Github board.

73

This is the recap from the meeting on 2021-10-19.

Video Recording

Participants

@antoviaque
@BbrSofiane
@dave
@e0d
@Felipe
@ghassan
@idegtiarov
@pdpinch
@regis
@sarina

Topics discussed

Working group updates

  • Marketing — 00:14:09

    The marketing group is working on planning another virtual event, in December.

    There are plans to have an in-person event in Lisbon in the spring. Some additional confirmation is needed regarding, so this topic requires following up on.

  • Release — 00:01:30

    @regis and @nedbat branched Maple master :partying_face:
    This has been announced in the “git checkout open-release/maple.master” thread.

    At the moment, there is no rc.1 tag yet because during that time, it wasn’t possible for people to install the maple release.

    Since Tutor is now the relied method of installation for Open edX, the priority was to ensure Tutor was working with the latest maple master branch. A new branch has been created by @regis for testing.

    If you have any interests in contributing to Tutor or the release working group, please setup Maple using Tutor and report any issues you might to the BTR working group.

  • Frontend — 00:06:02

    Not much updates regarding the frontend working group were discussed during this meeting.

    The main points discussed were about reusable headers and footers, dropping IE11 support, and the Node 16 upgrade.

    More information can be found on “FWG Working Session Notes - 2021-10-19”.

  • Core Contributors — 00:08:02

    There weren’t many updates for this meetup.

    Core committers @arbrandes and @giovannicimolin now have access to the edx-platform, alongside their other repos. Congratulations! :partying_face:

    There are additional plans towards adding even more core committers, especially to the edx-platform repo. Moreover, there’s additional work being done towards adding non technical contributors in other areas than translations.

    Currently, non-technical contributors (NTC) in the UX and/or Product areas would be nice. @sarina is looking for candidates who might be interested in such non-technical core contributor roles. So if you are, please reach out!

Events

N/A

New or Ongoing projects

  • Upgrades — 00:17:25

    • Django 3.2 upgrade

      The Django 3.2 upgrade has been completed on time and included in the latest Maple master branch, as planned.

      The ecommerce application was not upgraded, but is being actively worked on at the moment. It is most likely going to take another month to complete.

      There is remaining important work for the Django 3.2 upgrade, however, it isn’t blocking. More information about the upgrade can be found in the “Django 3.2 Upgrade” GitHub project board.

    • MongoDB 4.2 Upgrade

      The MongoDB ugprade work has been completed.
      You can check the progress tracking page for more information.

    • ElasticSearch upgrade

      The ElasticSearch upgrade work has been completed.
      You can check the progress tracking page for more information.

    • Node.js 16

      The frontend working group is mainly working on that upgrade. It’s a less critical upgrade since it is related to build-time dependencies and will not be running on production systems.

  • MySQL instead of MongoDB — 00:28:40

    @dave will be proposing an ADR in order to better inform the community about the decision behind utilizing MySQL instead of MongoDB.

    There is no clear date as to when MongoDB would be removed, because of the following blockers:

    • Old mongo courses
    • Forums/Discussions service
    • Modulestore queries

    There are concerns regarding MongoDB being removed because it’s currently utilized by some clients for storage. Adjusting the django storage was a suggestion provided which resolve the concerns.

  • Django Backend APIs: Django Signal Events, Django Filters — 00:26:10

    The first batch of Open edX events and initial documentation pull requests were both merged.

    Django signal events can be used on Maple.

  • xAPI/Caliper, OEP-26 — 00:27:08

    No updates were shared regarding that.

    It seems like some community members are utilizing the xAPI implementation and reporting some issues they are facing.

  • Contributor t-shirt — 00:45:50

    According to @gabrieldamours’s latest update, a sample is on its way to him.

    This thread’s priority will be decreased, so if you’d like to keep up with all the updates happening, please check out the github issue.

  • DEPR impediments - any tickets that need real-time discussion? — 00:41:00

    • Entrance Exam - how can we remove this unsupported feature from the core?

      There are efforts being done to find a core contributor who can pick up the DEPR ticket, start discussions on the forum about different alternatives, and find a volunteer to contribute the alternative to the community.

      @omar will be discussing this ticket with his team to see if they can support an alternative solution for the entrance exam feature.

  • Dev Onboarding Courses — 00:47:10

    At the moment, there are no updates regarding the dev onboarding course.

    Unfortunately, at the moment @omar doesn’t have enough capacity to move forward with the dev onboarding course. However, @omar and his team are working on hiring someone who can dedicate a larger portion of their time to the community and the dev onboarding course.

    Accordingly, the work on the dev onboarding course has been paused for now.

    Also, @regis brought up an important point regarding adding instructions for utilizing Tutor in the dev onboarding course, alongside or instead of the devstack.

  • Contribution Course — 00:47:50

    • There are efforts for having the draft content ready by the end of the year.
    Work on the graphic and video assets is not expected to start before next year.

    Most of the contributors are volunteers. If you’re interested, in contributing, you can check the contribution guide. The next meeting for the Contribution Course is on Monday October 25 17:00 UTC. Everyone is free to attend.

  • Tech Radar — 00:54:30

    @sarina and @djoy are encouraging members of the community to review the tech radar blips’ positioning. It’s the last call for reviewers.

    The chance to review is expected to be closed by the 29th of October. So, if you have 5 mins to spare, give “Tech Radar Beta: Last Call for Reviewers!” a quick look.

  • Coffee Break Meetings — 00:55:45

    @idegtiarov is organizing a Coffee Break meeting for core contributors which will be hosted next week on Thursday October 28th. Currently, the time is still being discussed in a slack thread, but the expected times are 14:00 UTC, 16:00 UTC, and 17:00 UTC.

    The coffee break is intended for core contributors to get to know each other and talk freely.

    If you’re interested in attending, please be sure to join the #core-contributors slack channel to stay up-to-date with the latest updates regarding the Coffee Break.

More details, including the chat log, on this meeting’s agenda.

Next meetup

Tuesday November 2nd at 15:00 UTC (Timezone converter).

Details and draft agenda on the Github board.

3 Likes
74

This is the recap from the meeting on 2021-11-02.

First of all, apologies to all for the delayed recap and shared recording. I was sick, unfortunately, for the past 2 weeks and I had trouble coordinating with someone to share them instead.

Topics discussed

Working groups

  • Marketing — 00:02:23

    There were no updates.

    A question was asked about the date set for the Open edX Virtual Event in December, which is disclosed below.

    There were also discussions about asking working groups to provide their updates asynchronously so the updates don’t have to be given by a specific representative.

  • Release — 00:05:59

    maple.beta1 has been branched :partying_face: It’s also ready to be tested with Tutor, so if it’s something you’re interested in, you should jump right in!

    The lilac.3 open-release has also been tagged. You’re encouraged to upgrade your lilac instances :smiley:

  • Frontend — 00:07:10

    Some progress is being done on the Node 16 upgrade. Some additional effort is being put towards sharing more UI related tasks with the community, so others can have the chance to get involved.

    The learning MFE is one of the many MFEs who has its header hard coded into it, which makes it not customizable or theme-able. There’s already a mechanism that uses the headers as frontend components; however, some MFEs aren’t using it. However, work is being done on that front so that the header can be customized in the learning MFE.

    More information can be found on " FWG Meetup 2021-11-09".

  • Core Contributors — 00:09:17

    Work is being done to get a UX Core Contributor. Someone also showed interest in being a Product Core Contributor, so there are some follow-ups regarding that.

    More committers are sought after, at the moment.

  • Data — 00:10:48

    The data working group’s work will be available on GitHub’s beta projects.

    The first priority is looking into the issue with ElasticSearch vs OpenSearch. In order to help the edX team, the working group will provide recommendations.

Events

  • Open edX Virtual Event in December - 00:02:43

    On Tuesday December the 14th, an Open edX Virtual Event will be held on Gather. There is no official announcement yet.

Projects

  • Core Contributors Sprints — 00:12:58

    There were previous discussions, in the past, regarding better tracking the work done on the core contributor front.

    There are discussions happening on the github issue, which members are welcome to contribute to.

    At the moment, great things are being done, but many core contributors aren’t aware of each others work because of the increasing number of core contributors.

    The suggestion, at the moment, is to create a 2 week sprint with synchronous meetings where core contributors can share their updates. The updates would be shared in two different synchronous meetings, so members can join the one which is more appropriate with their timezone.

    Another suggestion would be having a 15 minute meetup every month, on two different sides of the world, so members can share a statement of what they are working on with others.

    In order to have a better idea regarding the opinions of core contributors on the matter, @antoviaque will be reaching out to further coordinate the discussion.

    There is a wide range of core contributors, which created a concern regarding the amount of different projects which would be covered. However, identifying the different range of projects would facilitate finding other core contributors who can help, whenever needed, according to @sarina. This would allow core contributors to have a larger impact where they can help and when necessary.

    There are also suggestions to use the community meetup to share the updates because a large number of the core contributors are available during that meeting. In addition, a large portion of the projects being worked on are being discussed in that meeting.

    For the latest updates on the discussion, it’s best to follow-up on its github issue.

  • Leaderboard — 00:21:34

    Not much time can be dedicated towards it at the moment. It seems like the approach, for now, is to hold off on any work or discussions related to the leaderboard, until the future of the project is clear.

  • edX Brandings Backlog — 00:24:30

    The construction of a backlog which collects any edX branding and/or business logic which should be moved to plugins or removed from them is being suggested by @e0d.

    If you know where such things exist, please be sure to share them with @e0d, possibly over Discourse messages or Slack, to help contribute in the preparation of the backlog.

    In addition, @nedbat has plans to remove statements which direct users to contact edX support from the Open edX platform.

    Side note: if you can suggest a better name for this project, please share your ideas. I don’t believe mine is accurate.

  • Upgrades

    • Django 3.2 upgrade — 00:30:16

      There are some slight additional dependencies which need to be addressed on the Django 3.2 board.

      However, this project has been considered to be complete in the meetup, so it won’t be discussed in future updates.

      From a community perspective, there are interests in knowing how many issues where tackled by people outside of edX.

    • Node.js 16 — 00:33:33

      At the moment, work is being done to identify what breaks and changes with the Node upgrade.

      In addition, the node package manager (npm) needs to be upgraded as well. In hopes of resolving the issues with npm, there are prospects to utilize the node version manager (nvm) to specify an npm version to use with the Open edX repositories.

      The work is still in early discovery stages, at the moment.

  • Django Backend APIs: Django Signal Events, Django Filters — 00:35:56

    Some internal work is being done to apply the decisions taken in the ADRs regarding Django Filters in the implementation.

    Once the implementation is ready, it would be shared with the community to retrieve some feedback.

  • xAPI/Caliper, OEP-26 — 00:37:26

    A major version of the library was released where the xAPI transformers were refined. Router configuration was made easier, in addition to the improvements in the documentation.

    At the moment, the library works for Maple, only. At the moment, there are no plans to backport the library to the previous named releases, because there hasn’t been much demand regarding previous named releases.

    If you’d like to utilize the xAPI/Caliper implementation, you’ll want to upgrade to the Maple release.

  • MySQL instead of MongoDB — 00:42:16

    An initial pull request was created, which then had to be reverted and broken down into 3 pieces to provide casual roll-outs.

    The largest pull request has been merged into master. However, it will be reverted for Maple so that the changes can be extensively tested by the edX team before queuing up the change for the Nutmeg release.

    Any additional pull requests merged related to utilizing MySQL instead of MongoDB won’t be included in the Maple release, to avoid confusion.

    This change does not target MongoDB for the forum, but only the Open edX platform, as mentioned in @dave’s ADR.

  • DEPR impediments - any tickets that need real-time discussion? — 00:53:01

Video Recording

The chat log can be found on the meeting’s agenda.

Participants

@Andres.Aulasneo
@antoviaque
@BbrSofiane
@dave
@djoy
@e0d
@Felipe
@ghassan
@idegtiarov
@nedbat
@nizar
@pdpinch
@regis
@sarina
@Zia_Fazal

Next meetup

Tuesday November 16th at 15:00 UTC (Timezone converter).

Details and draft agenda on the Github board.

2 Likes
75

As requested by multiple members, we have created a poll in order to address daylight saving time. This should help find a more appropriate time for most attendees.

Contributor’s Meetup WhenIsGood Poll

As usual, please keep the following in mind, so we can maximize the “goodness” of the chosen time:

  1. Select your timezone
  2. Paint over as large a range of dates and times as remotely possible - even if not necessarily comfortable.

You can keep track of results here. The chosen time will be converted to UTC so that subsequent DST changes don’t affect it. The decision will apply to the meeting after Tuesday November 30 and subsequent ones.

The results will be recapped in the next meetup. The meetup after that would be announced there as well.

Tagging potential attendees:

@abstract-technology
@amy.e.brown
@Andres.Aulasneo
@antoviaque
@BbrSofiane
@dave
@djoy
@e0d
@Felipe
@ghassan
@idegtiarov
@marcotuts
@nedbat
@Nicole_Kessler
@nizar
@omar
@pdpinch
@regis
@sambapete
@sarina

1 Like
76

This is the recap from the meeting on 2021-11-16.

Topics discussed

Working groups

  • 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.

  • 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_leaf: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”.

  • 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! :partying_face:
    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.

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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.

  • 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


  • Upgrades

    • 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.

    • Node.js 16 — 00:53:40

      No significant updates.

  • 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.

  • xAPI/Caliper, OEP-26 — 00:54:30

    No updates.

  • 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.

1 Like
77

Hello team,

I would like to propose a new item. Similar to what’s happening with the DEPR process: an increasing involvement of the community and the creation of the Deprecation WG, I’d like to propose the creation of a “New features” WG (or a better name, you get the idea). We can take the experience of last year, and make it more continuous by gathering ideas on a regular schedule, keeping a backlog and making a selection to assign resources to implement.

78

This is the recap from the meeting on 2021-11-30.

Topics discussed

Working groups

  • Marketing — 00:03:30

    Multiple blog posts and tweets have been posted announcing the Open edX December 14 Virtual Event.

    In the future, the marketing working group updates will be provided by @Eden_Huthmacher.

  • Release — 00:06:28

    The BTR working group are hard at work releasing maple. Some issues remain open. More testing is needed from the community.

    Ecommerce on Maple is currently broken in multiple ways, mainly because of identity verification, cyber source, and custom payment backends. Many of the issues faced can be found on the BTR working group board.

    There are more planned efforts to report the problems that were faced by creating more detailed tickets in the BTR working group project to describe and target the different problems faced.

    The issues the BTR working group are facing right now are crucial and require additional help from the community. These issues risk delaying the Maple release or delivering one which members might not wish to upgrade to (in the case of a broken ecommerce).

    Unfortunately, these issues are quite difficult to reproduce and resolve because it’s already difficult to set-up ecommerce. In order to help reduce these difficulties, a suggestion was provided regarding creating a shared ecommerce instance.

    In addition, people usually have expertise about one or a few more of those components, but never the full stack. Although that’s also common among core committers, a suggestion was provided to utilize the core contributors in these tickets. Core committers most likely have worked with ecommerce previously and are more knowledgeable of the platform to set things up, debug, and resolve them.

    In order to better utilize the efforts of the core contributors, the utilization of the core contributors sprints was suggested. Accordingly, a first sprint is being prepared to prioritize some issues to said core contributors.

    There are also discussions regarding marketing the need for experts on certain repositories by making them more appealing, regardless of the difficulties.

    There are still some concerns and requests, though, for a clear definition as to what extent the Maple release would resolve some of the ongoing ecommerce issues.

  • Frontend — 00:37:45

    No updates reported.

  • Core Contributors — 00:38:05

    @nizar is joining the core contributor program as a project manager and a forum moderator. Congratulations :partying_face:

    @antoviaque and @sarina rewrote the declaration of commitment to the core contributor program. The language was updated, mainly, to indicate the document is about the code-base and the program and not the entity. In addition, changes were made to include all core contributors, non technical contributors and core committers, in the document’s language.

  • Data — 00:39:35

    There were some discussions regarding using Figures as the default data analytics tool-set for the open distribution.

    A question remained regarding who will continue maintaining Figures on an on-going basis.

Events

  • Open edX Virtual Event in December — 00:03:30

    The next Open edX Virtual Event is Tuesday December 14th.

    Be sure to register to the event.

Projects

  • Core Contributors Sprints — 00:44:40

    The next step, after the discussions which were taking place, will be to make a quick proposal where the sprint can be focused around unblocking the Maple release.

    There are efforts regarding scheduling a sprint for the next couple of weeks.

  • Upgrades

    • Node.js 16 — 00:46:07

      No significant updates.

  • Django Backend APIs: Django Signal Events, Django Filters — 00:46:25

    The first pull request which uses filters has been opened to the edx-platform. A similar path is taken, as before; three filters are being presented to be tested and used.

    People are encouraged to take a look at the implementation and review the changes.

  • xAPI/Caliper, OEP-26 — 00:48:30

    The members involved are waiting for Maple to be released so people can start using the implementation and providing feedback.

  • MySQL instead of MongoDB — 00:54:46

    Another pull request has been merged.

    @dave will be providing additional asynchronous updates regarding the removal of MongoDB on this discourse thread in case you’re interested in following up on this topic.

    For now, the item will be removed from the agenda until there are some major updates.

  • DEPR impediments - any tickets that need real-time discussion?

    • Entrance Exam - how can we remove this unsupported feature from the core? — 00:50:21

      It is necessary to check in with another core contributor affected by the issue to see if they can take in ownership of the ticket. Reaching out to the deprecation working group about this ticket was also considered.

      The entrance exam, specifically, is considered a little hard to replace because it’s pretty old and unrefined; this makes the feature not quite wanted by the community.

      Concerns were raised regarding features being deprecated/removed without a replacement. However, others voiced their concerns about the liabilities unmaintained features or pieces of code bring.

    • Replace the Ecommerce Application — 00:52:00

      The reporter of this deprecation ticket has left edX.

      According to the contributors, edX can choose not to use ecommerce; however, the deprecation of ecommerce requires the feedback of the community. The deprecation ticket can be utilized to retrieve that feedback, though.

      Originally, there was an interest in a replacement which would be easier for everyone to work with and would work better for the community.

Video Recording

The chat log can be found on the meeting’s agenda.

Participants

@Andres.Aulasneo
@antoviaque
@dave
@djoy
@e0d
@Felipe
@nedbat
@nizar
@omar
@pdpinch
@regis
@sarina
@Zia_Fazal

Next meetup

Tuesday December 21st at 15:00 UTC (Timezone converter).

Details and draft agenda on the Github board.

1 Like
79

@nizar Thanks for the great recaps! :slight_smile:

@Andres.Aulasneo Sounds good, I’ve added an item to the agenda @nizar just created at Contributor's Meetup 2021-12-21 · Issue #48 · openedx/community-wg · GitHub to discuss it. To help discussing it, it might be worth preparing a concrete proposal for it - maybe in a dedicated thread and/or document? How would it differ from the roadmap items for example, or OEPs and ADRs?

1 Like
80

Hi Xavier!
Actually I think that the roadmap is the place to keep track of the initiatives. My proposal is to create a working group where the community can participate in the discussion and have the issues moving.

81

This is the recap from the meeting on 2021-12-21.

Topics discussed

Working groups

  • Marketing — 00:05:13

    The general consensus regarding the Open edX virtual event of December 14 was that the event went very well.

    There are a couple of on-going projects that the marketing working group is working on at the moment.

    One of the projects is a “meet the community” video series which they are currently in the process of filming. The goal is to put a voice to some of the folks working behind the scenes and draw wider interest in the community by hooking people in. People in this video series give a quick introduction about themselves, their role in the community, and what they are working on in quick little snippets of 2 mins at most.

    There is another initiative around getting a brochure drafted in order to compare the Open edX platform in the LMS ecosystem space. The document is currently open for feedback in case anyone is interested in contributing some edits or thoughts.

  • Release — 00:08:20

    Maple is live :partying_face:
    There were significant efforts put to tie up some loose ends, in a four hour call, to ensure everything is ready for the release. So major kudos to everyone who participated!

    If you have time, have a go at Maple. Try things out and let the release working group know if there’s any issues that were missed.

    There will be a series of blog posts in order to announce Maple and its features. This significant effort is being put in order to incentivize people to upgrade their instances with each release.

    Unfortunately, it seems like there’s little visibility inside edX about the Open edX releases. Fortunately, some efforts will be put towards raising awareness about named releases inside edX.

    Additional MFEs were added in Maple. A lot of help was required with the new additions of MFEs; however, huge kudos to @djoy for the synchronous help provided to the BTR working group.

    A Maple Retrospective thread has been created in order to collect more information regarding what went good and what could use some improvement.

    The Maple release notes have been published as well! Be sure to check them out!

  • Frontend — 00:16:50

    There are no frontend working group updates.

    However, there updates regarding the Node.js upgrade, so be sure to check them out below.

  • Core Contributors — 00:16:50

    No updates here as well.

  • Data — 00:17:46

    The working group meeting which should have taken place at the end of 2021 was moved because many members were away.

    The data working group is looking to bring back Figures in Tutor. Figures is a light-weight analytics dashboard for Open edX instances.
    It is maintained by Appsembler; however, they don’t necessarily run the latest version of Open edX so updating it to the latest named release has to be done by someone else.

    The data working group wants to update figures to the latest named Open edX release, in this case Maple. The data working group would be looking to release a Maple compatible version of Figures in the upcoming weeks.

    The data working group discussed with Appsembler sharing some of the merge rights or making it easier for the community to maintain Figures.

    There are more ideas regarding analytics and how to facilitate moving from Figures to a more involved analytics stack. Figures will be used also to test these ideas and develop them further.

    Figures would not be included in the vanilla installation of tutors but would be installed as an additional plugin, if necessary. A tutor plugin for figures already exists; however, is no longer being maintained.

  • Deprecation — 00:23:00

    No updates were mentioned during the meeting.
    The updates for different meetings can be found on Confluence.

Events

  • General Discussion — 00:23:46

    There are no talks about doing any virtual events between now and the possible upcoming live event in Lisbon.

    Unfortunately, the decision regarding the event taking place hasn’t been taken yet.

    However, some efforts are being directed towards the preparation of different talk topics.

Projects

  • “New features” working group creation? — 00:26:57

    Unfortunately, the owner of this agenda item wasn’t available during that meeting.

    Based on the discussion during the meetup, it is expected that the working group’s creation is find alternative solutions to the deprecated tickets, specifically the Entrance Exam deprecation ticket.

    There are questions regarding whether this working group would fit under the responsibilities of the Deprecation working group.

    Unfortunately, it remains unclear what is intended/requested by this. Accordingly, this will be discussed in future meetups.

    It’s important to see how the intentions of this working group and the evolving public roadmap align.

  • Core Contributors Sprints — 00:40:00

    The core contributors sprints have been on going for a couple of weeks now. Many core contributors have had the opportunity to attend the sprint’s meetup call.

    The sprints have helped find some contribution time around the Maple release, fortunately.

    There are plans of moving things slightly asynchronously and delegating parts of the sprints and their preparation to different working groups to provide better scalability.

  • Upgrades

    • Node.js 16 — 00:34:35

      Unfortunately, the work on the upgrade was stalled because the edX build infrastructure does not allow for an incremental upgrade of the Node.js version. Libraries are being upgraded. MFEs aren’t being upgraded, however, because edX’s deployment pipeline sets the Node.js version globally.

      Sadly, the build infrastructure is proving to be quite difficult and will require some additional assistance from different edX teams, which will require more time.

      Due to these complications, Node.js 16 did not make it into Maple.

  • Django Backend APIs: Django Signal Events, Django Filters — 00:40:04

    The filters pull request is still waiting on reviewers from the community, to ensure that things are as conclusive as desired.

    The first filters are ready to merge by mid January in case no new community reviews are provided.

  • xAPI/Caliper, OEP-26 — 00:43:01

    No updates.

  • DEPR impediments - any tickets that need real-time discussion?

    • Entrance Exam - how can we remove this unsupported feature from the core? — 00:43:33

      We need a representative of the Deprecation working group to know if the working group can take ownership of these issues.

  • MFE Theming — 00:49:27

    Work has continued to progress on the UX/UI side of things. Another review is expected before sharing the results with the community.

    Collaborations might be expected from edX, OpenCraft and eduNext regarding MFE theming.

    Initially, some technical barriers or limitations were blocking some of the progress. While they continue to do so, there are interests in starting discussions about the blockers once again as soon as all parties are back on board.

  • Contribution Course — 00:55:30

    A nice working session was organized where different members were available and significant progress was contributed.

    More content was written on that day than in the previous months.

    There are plans to do similar sessions again in early 2022.

Video Recording

The chat log can be found on the meeting’s agenda.

I apologize for the extremely last post.

Participants

@antoviaque
@BbrSofiane
@dave
@djoy
@Felipe
@jmakowski
@nedbat
@nizar

Next meetup

Tuesday January 11th at 15:00 UTC (Timezone converter).

Details and draft agenda on the Github board.