llvm dev - May 2018 - I am leaving llvm

On May 2, 2018, at 12:40 PM, Gleb Popov via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at
lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> Somewhat recently a code of conduct was adopted. It says that the
> community tries to welcome people of all "political belief".
Except
> those whose political belief mean that they don't agree with the code
> of conduct. Since agreement is required to take part in the
> conferences, I am no longer able to attend.
> 
> I feel exactly the same way about the CoC. The whole CoC idea is just a
bullshit that brings discord in open source projects.
> 
> I haven't seen a project that adopted a CoC and had no members leaved
after that.
This list is for technical compiler and tools discussions, lets not turn a
thread about Rafael’s personal decision into a rant about CoC’s which we have
been through before.

If you’d like to have a productive discussion about CoC topics, then please
start a new thread and use a *respectful and productive* tone.

Thanks,

-Chris

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I'm very sad to hear that you are leaving LLVM. I hope we cross paths in
the future. I have learned so much from you, especially your legendary
testcase reduction skills and your ability to incrementally simplify and
improve a codebase.

The list of fond memories from our open-source interaction and our time as
coworkers at PlayStation is far too long for this email to contain.

-- Sean Silva

On Wed, May 2, 2018, 9:37 AM Rafael Avila de Espindola via llvm-dev <
llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> Summary:
>
> I am leaving llvm effectively immediately. I am sorry for any
> inconvenience this may cause.
>
> Practicalities:
>
> I can unsubscribe myself from the email lists and I disabled email
> notification on bugzilla and phabricator. Could someone please disable
> my account on phabricator and delete my svn access? Thanks.
>
> The long story:
>
> I first became aware of llvm during a compiler course at university. I
> wanted to write a toy scheme frontend to a real compiler. To my shame
> I missed that llvm had a mem2reg pass and selected gcc to avoid having
> to compute ssa form myself.
>
> After contributing a few patches to gcc it was clear that the frontend
> interface needed some cleanup. At the time llvm was being considered
> as a potential new gcc architecture and the idea of a well defined IR
> with a textual representation was a revolution.
>
> On my first job (indt) we were using arm cpus and I was able to sell
> the idea of starting an llvm backend for arm. My first commit was on
> May 14, 2006. I am incredibly grateful to both indt and the llvm
> developers for trusting and helping such an inexperienced and unknown
> developer with such a large task.
>
> It is only in May 2007 in the dev meeting that I got to meet the other
> developers in person. It was an incredibly fun event and people were
> as friendly in person as on the list.
>
> In the next few years I was working at google. First as an sre and
> then a compiler developer on gcc. During that time I kept llvm as my
> 20% project as much as possible. Working on it was always a refreshing
> experience. It was far easier to change and far less political than gcc
> at the time.
>
> My opportunity to be back full time on llvm came with portable native
> client (pnacl). They needed to be able to emit elf objects from llvm ir
> and so I went to work on elf support for mc.
>
> Unfortunately another job change (mozilla) made llvm a side project
> again after that. I still managed to contribute to llvm/clang as I
> helped mozilla transition away from gcc 4.2 on OS X.
>
> It is only about 5 years ago that I started working on llvm full time
> again. The big item this time was elf support in lld. I was really
> excited when Rui posted a new design for a coff linker and did my best
> to find a corresponding design for elf.
>
> Unfortunately the last few years haven't been the same. On the
> technical side llvm now feels far bigger and slower to change. There
> are many incomplete transitions. That, by itself, would not be
> sufficient reason to leave. llvm still seems better than the
> competition and lld itself is still awesome.
>
> The reason for me leaving are the changes in the community. The
> current license change discussions unfortunately bring to memory the
> fsf politics when I was working on gcc. That would still not be
> sufficient reason to leave. As with the code, llvm will still have the
> best license and if the only community change was the handling of the
> license change I would probably keep going.
>
> The community change I cannot take is how the social injustice
> movement has permeated it. When I joined llvm no one asked or cared
> about my religion or political view. We all seemed committed to just
> writing a good compiler framework.
>
> Somewhat recently a code of conduct was adopted. It says that the
> community tries to welcome people of all "political belief".
Except
> those whose political belief mean that they don't agree with the code
> of conduct. Since agreement is required to take part in the
> conferences, I am no longer able to attend.
>
> The last drop was llvm associating itself with an organization that
> openly discriminates based on sex and ancestry (1,2). This goes
> directly against my ethical views and I think I must leave the project
> to not be associated with this.
>
> So long, and thanks for all the bugs,
> Rafael
>
> [1] http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2018-February/121161.html
> [2] https://www.outreachy.org/apply/eligibility/
> _______________________________________________
> LLVM Developers mailing list
> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org
> http://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev
>
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Rafael,

I'm extremely sad to hear that you decided to leave the project. If you
already set your mind, I want to take this opportunity to say thank you to
you. You are the first person to advocate the current lld design and
encourage me to continue developing it. I don't think I can express how I
felt about it at the time in this email. You are also one of the best
programmers I've ever worked with. We've worked together in the past few
years to make a great product, and we have succeeded in making lld
something that people really want to use. Today, we have a lot of companies
using our linker. Lots of big name open-source projects have migrated/are
migrating to lld. That wouldn't have happened without you. You are my
super-star programmer. I'll miss you.

Rui

On Wed, May 2, 2018 at 9:38 AM Rafael Avila de Espindola via llvm-dev <
llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> Summary:
>
> I am leaving llvm effectively immediately. I am sorry for any
> inconvenience this may cause.
>
> Practicalities:
>
> I can unsubscribe myself from the email lists and I disabled email
> notification on bugzilla and phabricator. Could someone please disable
> my account on phabricator and delete my svn access? Thanks.
>
> The long story:
>
> I first became aware of llvm during a compiler course at university. I
> wanted to write a toy scheme frontend to a real compiler. To my shame
> I missed that llvm had a mem2reg pass and selected gcc to avoid having
> to compute ssa form myself.
>
> After contributing a few patches to gcc it was clear that the frontend
> interface needed some cleanup. At the time llvm was being considered
> as a potential new gcc architecture and the idea of a well defined IR
> with a textual representation was a revolution.
>
> On my first job (indt) we were using arm cpus and I was able to sell
> the idea of starting an llvm backend for arm. My first commit was on
> May 14, 2006. I am incredibly grateful to both indt and the llvm
> developers for trusting and helping such an inexperienced and unknown
> developer with such a large task.
>
> It is only in May 2007 in the dev meeting that I got to meet the other
> developers in person. It was an incredibly fun event and people were
> as friendly in person as on the list.
>
> In the next few years I was working at google. First as an sre and
> then a compiler developer on gcc. During that time I kept llvm as my
> 20% project as much as possible. Working on it was always a refreshing
> experience. It was far easier to change and far less political than gcc
> at the time.
>
> My opportunity to be back full time on llvm came with portable native
> client (pnacl). They needed to be able to emit elf objects from llvm ir
> and so I went to work on elf support for mc.
>
> Unfortunately another job change (mozilla) made llvm a side project
> again after that. I still managed to contribute to llvm/clang as I
> helped mozilla transition away from gcc 4.2 on OS X.
>
> It is only about 5 years ago that I started working on llvm full time
> again. The big item this time was elf support in lld. I was really
> excited when Rui posted a new design for a coff linker and did my best
> to find a corresponding design for elf.
>
> Unfortunately the last few years haven't been the same. On the
> technical side llvm now feels far bigger and slower to change. There
> are many incomplete transitions. That, by itself, would not be
> sufficient reason to leave. llvm still seems better than the
> competition and lld itself is still awesome.
>
> The reason for me leaving are the changes in the community. The
> current license change discussions unfortunately bring to memory the
> fsf politics when I was working on gcc. That would still not be
> sufficient reason to leave. As with the code, llvm will still have the
> best license and if the only community change was the handling of the
> license change I would probably keep going.
>
> The community change I cannot take is how the social injustice
> movement has permeated it. When I joined llvm no one asked or cared
> about my religion or political view. We all seemed committed to just
> writing a good compiler framework.
>
> Somewhat recently a code of conduct was adopted. It says that the
> community tries to welcome people of all "political belief".
Except
> those whose political belief mean that they don't agree with the code
> of conduct. Since agreement is required to take part in the
> conferences, I am no longer able to attend.
>
> The last drop was llvm associating itself with an organization that
> openly discriminates based on sex and ancestry (1,2). This goes
> directly against my ethical views and I think I must leave the project
> to not be associated with this.
>
> So long, and thanks for all the bugs,
> Rafael
>
> [1] http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2018-February/121161.html
> [2] https://www.outreachy.org/apply/eligibility/
> _______________________________________________
> LLVM Developers mailing list
> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org
> http://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev
>
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> However, the main point here is why we have it and who is doing it. I
> know Chandler and Tanya for a while and, while I do not speak for
> them, I trust them to *want* to do the right thing (tm).
> 
> If they miss the mark, or make mistakes, I'd first point out to them,
> not assume ill intent. This has been my personal experience and I have
> no reason to change behaviour.
I feel compelled to throw in my two cents here.

I agree 100% that the Foundation is full of people with good intentions.
I have been on a board like that, and it is extremely seductive; the
downside is, having such good intentions you see no value in establishing
good practices and processes.  There is a proverbial road paved with all
good intentions.

[This is where Chris will step in and say this isn't the right forum
for discussing how the Foundation is set up or behaves, and he is right.
So I will stop here.]

OOTC: I deeply respect Rafael for his technical contributions, both in
open-source and as a fellow employee.  Having myself left a prior
company over an ethical issue, I fully support his decision.
--paulr