llvm dev - Jan 2022 - LLVM Discourse migration: goals justify means?

On 1/27/22 09:31, Tanya Lattner via llvm-dev wrote:
>> In a broader sense, I want to part with this observation. In my
experience, large projects develop a kind of "in-group", a set of
people who need to be interacted with to get things done in the project. Of the
projects I've worked with, LLVM has had the most opaque
"in-group", in the sense that it's difficult for a beginner (or
even more experienced contributors) to figure out who you need to get to review
a patch, or when you've got enough agreement on an RFC to move forward with
implementation. This is a bigger issue with LLVM in general, but the risk with
respect to infrastructure in particular is that I am extremely worried that the
LLVM infrastructure group is pushing away much or all of the
"in-group", and that has incumbent risks for the future health of the
project as a whole.
> The Infrastructure Working group is open to anyone.
Speaking as someone who joined the IWG, provided strongly negative 
feedback on the proposed discourse transitions, and then resigned 
because I didn't want my name associated with an effort likely to be so 
disastrous, I strongly question this assertion.

"We value your feedback" is pretty meaningless when that feedback is 
ignored.

(Apologies if this comes across as too snarky.  I tried to reword this a 
couple of times, but couldn't find a way to do so without loosing the 
important point.)

Philip

On 1/27/22 12:35, Philip Reames via llvm-dev wrote:
> 
> On 1/27/22 09:31, Tanya Lattner via llvm-dev wrote:
>>> In a broader sense, I want to part with this observation. In my
experience, large projects develop a kind of "in-group", a set of
people who need to be interacted with to get things done in the project. Of the
projects I've worked with, LLVM has had the most opaque
"in-group", in the sense that it's difficult for a beginner (or
even more experienced contributors) to figure out who you need to get to review
a patch, or when you've got enough agreement on an RFC to move forward with
implementation. This is a bigger issue with LLVM in general, but the risk with
respect to infrastructure in particular is that I am extremely worried that the
LLVM infrastructure group is pushing away much or all of the
"in-group", and that has incumbent risks for the future health of the
project as a whole.
>> The Infrastructure Working group is open to anyone.
> 
> Speaking as someone who joined the IWG, provided strongly negative feedback
on the proposed discourse transitions, and then resigned because I didn't
want my name associated with an effort likely to be so disastrous, I strongly
question this assertion.
> 
> "We value your feedback" is pretty meaningless when that feedback
is ignored.
> 
It's hard to know how to respond to this without the specifics, but I would
say that in general, choosing to do something different does not mean that
feedback was ignored.

 From my perspective, I feel like a lot of the frustration around some
of these infrastructure projects could be avoided by improved communication
to the community about the status of these projects.  This is something
the Board[1] has discussed in the past and we've been trying to recruit
people from the iwg[2] to help with this.  If anyone wants to help with
this, please start a thread on the IWG Discourse[3] category.

-Tom

[1] https://foundation.llvm.org/documents/minutes/2021-11-03-Meeting-Minutes.pdf
[2] https://groups.google.com/u/1/a/llvm.org/g/iwg/c/NcNR5hWSo9c
[3] https://llvm.discourse.group/c/infrastructure/iwg/42
> (Apologies if this comes across as too snarky.  I tried to reword this a
couple of times, but couldn't find a way to do so without loosing the
important point.)
> 
> Philip
> 
> 
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