2026-08-13 Partner Call

Facilitator: @Heather Greer Klein

Note Taker: @Christine Peterson

Attendees

• Your name here!

• @Eleni Castro

• @Juliet Hardesty

• @Sarah Almond

• @Nicholas Mark Homenda

• @Kate Lynch

• @Chrissy Rissmeyer

• @Kirsten Leonard

• @Annamarie Klose

• @Nick Steinwachs

• Esme Cowles

• @Christine Peterson

Agenda & Notes

1. Additions to the agenda?
   
   

2. Discussion: Goals for a new AI Guidelines Working Group to make recommendations to the Samvera Board

   1. Previous consensus has been that our goal should be a guideline and not a policy; opinions on AI tool use are strongly divided in the community. Previous discussion at Partner Meeting.

   2. We have discussed that these guidelines should ensure human authorship and responsibility and leave it to each individual’s discretion which tools they may or may not choose to use in the process of authoring their code.

   3. For discussion: the scope, objectives, and deliverables for this Working Group

   4. What we have previously discussed wanting to accomplish:

      1. Requirement that AI tool use is acknowledged; per the guidelines for tagging AI-assisted or generated code;

      2. guidelines to ensure that all code contributions have a human author (ie nothing “agentic” or automated, nothing without a named, human, responsible author);

      3. that this author has responsibility for their own contributions; the author understands what they are contributing and can discuss it if needed during code review.

      4. The working group could suggest additional guardrails or guidelines.

   5. Next steps for a Guidelines Working Group - call for participants; a volunteer chair is welcome, or Heather can chair

   6. Discussion:

      1. Identifies good basics for coders

      2. Previous discussion between Nic Don, Nick, Heather and Rob has helped to form these recommendations

      3. Deliverables? Won’t focus on tools, but on the idea of responsibility, authorship, understanding what is being committed; outcome will be a set of guidelines which will go to the board; expect these guidelines/recommendations to be refined over time; time period for this work should be relatively short

      4. Want to be sure everyone is heard; don’t want to dictate how the work is done; good comments are included in the draft document; anyone with concerns should be part of this process. One concern is the amount of work this might require, knowing that resources are tighter within the institutions.

      5. Concern that the volume is coming more from Hyku than Hyrax; some institutions want Hyku functionality in Hyrax, but the codebase is complex, making it difficult for newer developers to help. Good conversation that we will continue to have.

      6. There is a wide variety of opinions, and that should be captured.

      7. Is there a tool that might detect PRs or commits that have been generated by AI? For GitHub, work must be submitted by a real user; however, we have seen some authored by bots.

      8. Concern about including security issues, risk awareness, and mitigation pathways.

      9. Volunteers from the Partner Group to serve? Hoping for just 2-3 meetings with a kickoff in September; maybe this initial set of recommendations focuses on what we have already agreed to and that are in other open-source communities; could surface issues that would need more time

         1. Facilitator: @Kirsten Leonard

         2. Participants from Partners: @Juliet Hardesty

      10. @Heather Greer Klein will create a charter based on our discussions and conversations; will create a poll and a private Slack channel for discussions; will keep Partners and Board updated

      11. Include an annual review at minimum
          
          

3. Latest from Apereo Foundation transition

   1. Heather’s employment has transitioned

   2. Financial transition underway

   3. July invoices are out or will be out today; unpaid outstanding invoices will also be reissued, but payments for existing invoices that still go to OASIS will be transferred to Apereo.
      
      

4. Other Updates: 

   1. Annual Hyrax/Hyku Upgrade Plan Partner benefit - Rob is working with OSU now, will launch once that is completed; will focus on other partner institutions after

   2. PALNI & PALCI are committed to funding Nic Don as Hyku Product Owner for the next few months as they look for a more permanent funding model. This is Nick Homenda’s second year as Hyrax Product Owner, so we will be looking for his replacement.

   3. Maybe an updated “what is Hyrax” might be in order. The demos facilitated by @Nicholas Mark Homenda in the Hyrax IG have been incredibly helpful and have begun conversations. Do institutions know what is core to Hyrax and what was developed locally?

   4. Bylaws vote - updating to remove OASIS Open agreement and add Apereo Foundation agreement. The Board will discuss any other updates; might suggest a minor change to the description of the finance subcommittee. This will be out for review ahead of the next Partner call, with a vote after.

   5. Nominate a community member for the 2026 Julie Allinson award

   6. Notetaker for September: @Eleni Castro

   7. Please consider a demo or discussion at a 2026 Partner call

   8. Anything for the Samvera Board? (Standing item) 
      
      

Date of next call: September 11th; on the agenda will be a financial overview, now that the Apereo transition will be completed. Looking at estimates for shared staffing costs, and where we are now vs where we would like to be for shared staffing support.

Notetaker: @Eleni Castro