Hello Stackers, We're two weeks away from the date of the coordinated 2025.2 "Flamingo" release [1]. At this time, nearly all deliverables that follow the "cycle-with-rc" release model [2] have shipped their first release candidate. Over the next couple of weeks, OpenStack project teams will be expected to test, find and resolve any release blockers in these deliverables. The ongoing elections to fill four seats on the OpenStack Technical Committee and to elect a PTL for the OpenStack Dashboard ("Horizon") project team will conclude at 23:45 UTC on September 17, 2025 [3]. If you haven't already voted, please do so. There were no new governance proposals that were merged in the past week. === Weekly Meeting === The last weekly meeting of the OpenStack Technical Committee was held on September 9, 2025 [4]. We discussed project teams that had no PTL candidates in the ongoing renewal exercise: Vitrage, OpenStack Charms, Venus, and Monasca. You are all aware that we began the retirement process for the Monasca team [5] and are actively considering a maintainer request. We expect to make a decision past the 2025.2 "Flamingo" coordinated release. We have had a call for help [6][7][8] advertisement for the other projects and will discuss alternatives if those go unanswered. The TC discussed efforts to increase voter turnout for OpenStack elections by encouraging people to opt in to CIVS emails. A related topic was the reduced electorate, which was suspected to be due to OpenInfra Foundation (OIF) membership renewal requirements. The committee agreed to follow up on this after the elections conclude. We discussed default MySQL/MariaDB charset/collation changes that affect most OpenStack service projects. A few key points were discussed, including the need for a potential community goal to migrate from utf8 (which aliases to utf8mb3) to utf8mb4 due to MariaDB's plan to remove the utf8 alias. The meeting also addressed a known issue with Ironic, which has conflicts with the larger utf8mb4 type due to index size limitations. We decided to gather more data on what each project is currently using to better understand the scope of the problem. Dmitriy Robotyogev (noonedeadpunk) and Seunghun Lee (seunghunlee) volunteered to collect this information and add it to a new Etherpad [9] that will inform next steps. After the meeting, Jonathan Wright (JonathanWright[m]) from AlmaLinux joined us to discuss the potential for adding AlmaLinux to OpenStack's supported runtimes, noting its benefits like support for older CPUs (AlmaLinux 10 continues to support older CPUs like x86-64-v2) and more stable CI mirrors compared to CentOS Stream. This could be a significant benefit for OpenStack's CI (Continuous Integration) providers, as it would allow them to utilize their existing, aging hardware more effectively for testing. Community contributors from AlmaLinux want to improve its integration with OpenStack, including creating tailored cloud images for CI and contributing infrastructure resources. We agreed that a clear goal is to establish a working relationship with AlmaLinux volunteers to create and maintain CI images. This effort would likely involve a "pop-up team" to handle the initial implementation, with a long-term plan for AlmaLinux contributors to take ownership of the testing infrastructure. The primary objective is ensuring OpenStack services and deployments can be reliably tested and deployed on AlmaLinux, thereby expanding the project's supported user base. If you're interested to be a part of this effort, please chime in on the #openstack-tc channel on OFTC. The next meeting of the OpenStack Technical Committee is on Tuesday, September 16, 2025, at 1700 UTC. It will be hosted on the #openstack-tc IRC channel on OFTC. Please find the meeting's agenda on the OpenStack wiki [10]. I hope you'll be able to join us there. === Governance Proposals === ==== Open For Review ==== - Retire metalsmith project from bare metal program | https://review.opendev.org/c/openstack/governance/+/958297 - Retire Monasca project | https://review.opendev.org/c/openstack/governance/+/953671 - Require declaration of affiliation from TC Candidates | https://review.opendev.org/c/openstack/governance/+/949432 - Extend Monasca's inactive state | https://review.opendev.org/c/openstack/governance/+/959392 === Upcoming Events === - 2025-09-17: OpenStack TC and Horizon project elections conclude: https://governance.openstack.org/election/ - 2025-10-01: OpenStack 2026.1 "Flamingo" release day - 2025-10-03: OpenStack's Birthday Meetup, Austin: https://www.meetup.com/openinfra-austin/events/310508680 - 2025-10-17: OpenInfra Summit, Paris-Saclay: https://summit2025.openinfra.org/ - 2025-10-27: OpenInfra PTG: https://openinfra.org/ptg/ Thank you very much for reading! On behalf of the OpenStack TC, Goutham Pacha Ravi (gouthamr) OpenStack TC Chair [1] 2025.2 "Flamingo" Release Schedule: https://releases.openstack.org/flamingo/schedule.html [2] "cycle-with-rc" release model: https://releases.openstack.org/reference/release_models.html#cycle-with-rc [3] OpenStack Elections: https://governance.openstack.org/election/ [4] TC Meeting IRC Log, Sep 9, 2025: https://meetings.opendev.org/meetings/tc/2025/tc.2025-09-09-17.00.html [5] Retire Monasca project: https://review.opendev.org/c/openstack/governance/+/953671 [6] PTL needed for OpenStack Vitrage: https://lists.openstack.org/archives/list/openstack-discuss@lists.openstack.... [7] PTL needed for OpenStack Charms: https://lists.openstack.org/archives/list/openstack-discuss@lists.openstack.... [8] PTL needed for OpenStack Venus: https://lists.openstack.org/archives/list/openstack-discuss@lists.openstack.... [9] Dealing with Mariadb/Mysql changes: https://etherpad.opendev.org/p/gazpacho-collations-charsets [10] TC Meeting Agenda, Sep 16, 2025: https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Meetings/TechnicalCommittee#Next_Meeting