[llvm-dev] RFC: Moving toward Discord and Discourse for LLVM's discussions

Chris Bieneman via llvm-dev
2019-11-19T02:00:44Z

David,

I'm glad you mentioned Discord's T&Cs. I'm not generally
concerned about these kinds of things, but Discord's seems particularly
aggressive. Particularly the phrase "perpetual, nonexclusive, transferable,
royalty-free, sublicensable, and worldwide license" is... a lot. Since LLVM
is a permissively licensed project I assume many of our contributors care about
licensing, and that might be a shared concern.

Since people have mentioned Slack on this thread, have you by chance looked at
Slack's ToS? The similar wording from Slack's ToS is, "worldwide,
non-exclusive, limited term license", which seems a lot less grabby. Would
you be less resistant to Slack?

-Chris

> On Nov 18, 2019, at 1:48 AM, David Chisnall via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at
lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>
> Hi Chandler,
>
> One of the things that came up in our discussion at the WiCT workshop as a
barrier for new members of the community was the fact that key decisions are
often made at round tables at developer meetings without involvement of the
wider community, particularly the large fraction that is not able to travel to
the West Coast.  More broadly, the opacity of the LLVM Project decision making
was raised as something that is problematic when attempting to build a wider and
more diverse community.
>
> I therefore find it slightly ironic that this is being announced after a
10-person discussion at an ancillary workshop that was attached to the main
DevMeeting.  This seems like a trend in the wrong direction.
>
> While I am in general in favour of creating new channels to extend the
reach of the community, I don't believe that something like this that
requires existing community members to participate to be useful should be
launched without a wider discussion.  This paragraph in your announcement stood
out:
>
> > We talked to a bunch of people and looked at the options out there and
> > the most promising ones were Discord for chatting and Discourse for
> > longer-form discussions.
>
> Who are these 'bunch of people'?  Why were they selected to make
this decision (and by whom)?
>
> Note that I don't object to the creation of a Discord server (though
the 'YOUR CONTENT' section of the T&Cs contains clauses that I'm
unwilling to agree to and so I won't be participating), only to the process
through which it was set up.
>
> David
>
>
> On 18/11/2019 07:48, Chandler Carruth via llvm-dev wrote:
>> Hello everyone,
>> *Short version:
>> *I've set up an LLVM Discord server for real time chat (similar to
IRC) and an LLVM Discourse server for forums (similar to email lists):
>> https://discord.gg/xS7Z362
>> https://llvm.discourse.group/
>> Please join and use these new services. They are only partially set up
and still very new, so don't hesitate to improve them and/or reach out to
this thread with any issues you see or things you want to fix. Also, both
services have dedicated feedback channels.
>> Do feel free to use Discourse for technical discussions, although try
not to create duplicate discussions (any more than you would between the lists
and Bugzilla) and make sure the people you're having the discussion with are
fine using Discourse instead of the email list. In case Discourse doesn't
work out, we'll collect and archive everything so it isn't lost.
>> *Longer version & more details:
>> *During this year's Women in Compilers and Tools meeting, folks
expressed very clearly that our communication systems cause a non-trivial amount
of friction for new people trying to find out about, learn, or contribute to
LLVM. Both IRC for chatting and mailing lists for longer-form discussions are
unfamiliar, difficult, and often intimidating for newcomers. While I have long
been a fan and resistant to change in these areas, the feedback from folks at
WiCT was compelling and important for us as a community to address. Even if it
means I have to let go of my precious IRC. ;]
>> We talked to a bunch of people and looked at the options out there and
the most promising ones were Discord for chatting and Discourse for longer-form
discussions. Meike and I have set up both an initial Discord and Discourse
server. You can find them here:
>> https://discord.gg/xS7Z362
>> https://llvm.discourse.group/
>> There is still a lot of work to be done. Notably, it'd be great for
folks to clean up and improve the summaries for each of the groups in Discourse,
and I'll be asking various people to help moderate on both Discourse and
Discord. If you'd like to help out with a specific set of improvements to
these, don't hesitate to reach out to me or Meike and we can get you set up.
Some specific things we're already working on:
>>  * Getting Discord verified with a nice URL.
>>  * Archives of mailing lists on Discourse so you can search in one
>>    place, etc.
>>      o See the plan here:
>>
https://llvm.discourse.group/t/mirroring-and-archiving-llvm-mailing-lists-on-discourse/61
<https://llvm.discourse.group/t/mirroring-and-archiving-llvm-mailing-lists-on-discourse/61>
>>  * Moving Discourse to forums.llvm.org <http://forums.llvm.org/>
<http://forums.llvm.org <http://forums.llvm.org/>>.
>>  * Documenting the best way to move to Discourse while preserving a
>>    similarly email-focused workflow.
>> We're just adding these for now, but I'd like people to
seriously try using them. While IRC has served us fairly well, I think it is one
of the bigger barriers to entry. Our email lists are more effective, but also
have had serious infrastructure challenges over the years: a constant flow of
spam, bouncing for several major email providers, etc. Discourse has very
powerful email-based workflows available and I think we should seriously
consider moving to Discourse long-term instead of the email lists.
>> I also want to say thanks to all the folks at the WiCT workshop for
giving me and others feedback. I was pretty set in my ways around these kind of
things, but hearing the kinds of challenges this has posed to people less
established in the community was a real eye opener. It takes a lot to speak up
like this, and I really appreciate it. I hope this also helps start to address
these long-standing issues. Also a huge thanks to Tanya for organizing the WICT
workshop and Meike for helping drive this message home to me and doing a bunch
of the work getting these things set up. I wouldn't have been able to do it
without her help, especially around Discord bots.
>> -Chandler
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