[VOTE] 3.6.1 RC0

Hello Kafka users, developers and client-developers,

This is the first candidate for release of Apache Kafka 3.6.1.

This is a bugfix release with several fixes, including dependency
version bumps for CVEs.

Release notes for the 3.6.1 release:
https://home.apache.org/~mimaison/kafka-3.6.1-rc0/RELEASE_NOTES.html

*** Please download, test and vote by Friday, December 1

Kafka's KEYS file containing PGP keys we use to sign the release:
https://kafka.apache.org/KEYS

* Release artifacts to be voted upon (source and binary):
https://home.apache.org/~mimaison/kafka-3.6.1-rc0/

* Maven artifacts to be voted upon:
https://repository.apache.org/content/groups/staging/org/apache/kafka/

* Javadoc:
https://home.apache.org/~mimaison/kafka-3.6.1-rc0/javadoc/

* Tag to be voted upon (off 3.6 branch) is the 3.6.1 tag:
https://github.com/apache/kafka/releases/tag/3.6.1-rc0

PR for updating docs:
https://github.com/apache/kafka-site/pull/568

* Documentation:
https://kafka.apache.org/36/documentation.html

* Protocol:
https://kafka.apache.org/36/protocol.html

* Successful Jenkins builds for the 3.6 branch:
Unit/integration tests: We still have a lot of flaky tests in the 3.6
branch. Looking at the last few 3.6 builds in
https://ci-builds.apache.org/job/Kafka/job/kafka/job/3.6/ it seems all
tests passed at least once apart from
ClusterConnectionStatesTest.testSingleIP(). There's
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/KAFKA-15762 to fix that test.
System tests: Still running I'll post an update once they complete.

Thanks,
Mickael