Release of v16.0.4

[mattlord]

This release is scheduled for Friday 18 August 2023.

Pre-Release

• Notify the community on Slack.
• Make sure the release notes summary is prepared and clean
• Make sure everyone in the release team meet the pre-requisites for the release
• Make sure all backports are complete
  • [16.0] bugfixes: collection of fixes to bugs found while fuzzing #13805
• Do the code freeze and pre release following the instructions.

Release

• Follow the release instructions for release: here
• Continue with the Java release following these instructions.
• Merge the 16.0.4 release notes on main.
• Make sure arewefastyet benchmarks the new release (https://benchmark.vitess.io/status)
• Release the operator, v2.9.4

Post-Release

• Notify the community on Slack.
• Benchmarking results
• Tweet vitess release