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

I want to chime in to say that Roman is definitely not alone in his 
impressions here.  I have previously shared my objections to the 
original proposal, and will not repeat myself.

I don't have the energy to engage in this discussion, and have already 
decided to put up with this and deal with the fallout. Given that, 
please do not expect further response from me on this topic.

Philip

On 1/26/22 2:36 PM, Roman Lebedev via llvm-dev wrote:
> Hi all.
>
> As most of us here learned on Jan 7, apparently, we,
> the LLVM community, have overwhelmingly supported
> the decision to move to Discourse.
>
> It already raises a question as to how said decision was made,
> and what exactly said "majority of the community" is.
> While it is true that the LLVM RFC process is unclear at best,
> in this particular case the problem becomes exceptionally egregious.
>
> While it may be a selection bias, as a data point,
> everybody, that i regularly talk to, in #llvm IRC
> were just as surprised to learn of said development as I was.
>
> There was no indication on e.g. llvm-dev@,
> and in fact the last mention of the migration was:
> https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/cfe-dev/2021-June/068449.html
> (over half a year ago!), but even if you just look at said thread,
> there were certain comments that weren't addressed, e.g.
> https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/cfe-dev/2021-June/068406.html
>
> Hopefully, the "vote" wasn't held at the discourse itself,
> otherwise it very much mirrors certain recent & future world events,
> and does not paint the LLVM in a good light.
>
> I'm fearful that the same story is bound to happen yet again
> with GitHub Pull Request migration, that all the multitude of complaints
> that were received each time they were requested (and that happened
> a number of times, hopefully not to exhaust those providing said feedback!)
> will be just swept away and ignored, and the switch be pushed through
> regardless, in the name of a noble "lowering the barrier of
entry" goal.
> (There's similar question about discord "RFC")
>
> So the first point I would like to raise is:
> such painful, community-wide decisions **can not** be made in secret.
> One way or another, it's going to affect every single LLVM developer,
> be it one working on the upstream LLVM, or some downstream fork,
> or those just wishing to keep up with the project.
> **There should be transparency and accountability.**
>
> The second question I would like to raise is:
> the blog post claims transparent, first-class email support,
> but the mailing list mode can not actually be toggled on.
> There is just no such checkbox, unlike some other discourse forum.
> For me personally, that is a deal-breaker, and unless I'm able to
> keep up to date with the discussions in the lists format,
> I'm simply going to stop following discussions, period.
>
> While, I, personally, have not had much hands-on experience with
> LLVM's discourse, mainly it's email side, I hear the situation
> is not what the blogpost claims it to be, and there are other things
> that aren't "just work", and that was known months ago, e.g.:
>
https://llvm.discourse.group/t/discourse-as-mailing-list-replacement-some-questions/3713/4
>
> Given that the hard switch point of Feb 1'st has already been set,
> and is less than a week away, i'd like to hear some clarification
> as to what is going on, and strongly recommend doing either of the
following:
> * STOP migration(s) due to "false start", the end status already
being decided
>    before the process even begun, and using the process just as a means
>    to legalize the decision made beforehand.
> * postponing the switch by a month (until March 1'st), or however long
needed,
>    effectively immediately, in order to make the migration actually
possible
>    by working out the issues that have come up during the migration.
>
> While what is written above is my personal view on things,
> I do **not** believe the said view is unique to me.
>
> What are the foundation's thoughts on this?
>
> Roman
> _______________________________________________
> LLVM Developers mailing list
> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org
> https://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev

Same here.

On Thu, 27 Jan 2022, 00:47 Philip Reames via llvm-dev, <
llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> I want to chime in to say that Roman is definitely not alone in his
> impressions here.  I have previously shared my objections to the
> original proposal, and will not repeat myself.
>
> I don't have the energy to engage in this discussion, and have already
> decided to put up with this and deal with the fallout. Given that,
> please do not expect further response from me on this topic.
>
> Philip
>
> On 1/26/22 2:36 PM, Roman Lebedev via llvm-dev wrote:
> > Hi all.
> >
> > As most of us here learned on Jan 7, apparently, we,
> > the LLVM community, have overwhelmingly supported
> > the decision to move to Discourse.
> >
> > It already raises a question as to how said decision was made,
> > and what exactly said "majority of the community" is.
> > While it is true that the LLVM RFC process is unclear at best,
> > in this particular case the problem becomes exceptionally egregious.
> >
> > While it may be a selection bias, as a data point,
> > everybody, that i regularly talk to, in #llvm IRC
> > were just as surprised to learn of said development as I was.
> >
> > There was no indication on e.g. llvm-dev@,
> > and in fact the last mention of the migration was:
> > https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/cfe-dev/2021-June/068449.html
> > (over half a year ago!), but even if you just look at said thread,
> > there were certain comments that weren't addressed, e.g.
> > https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/cfe-dev/2021-June/068406.html
> >
> > Hopefully, the "vote" wasn't held at the discourse
itself,
> > otherwise it very much mirrors certain recent & future world
events,
> > and does not paint the LLVM in a good light.
> >
> > I'm fearful that the same story is bound to happen yet again
> > with GitHub Pull Request migration, that all the multitude of
complaints
> > that were received each time they were requested (and that happened
> > a number of times, hopefully not to exhaust those providing said
> feedback!)
> > will be just swept away and ignored, and the switch be pushed through
> > regardless, in the name of a noble "lowering the barrier of
entry" goal.
> > (There's similar question about discord "RFC")
> >
> > So the first point I would like to raise is:
> > such painful, community-wide decisions **can not** be made in secret.
> > One way or another, it's going to affect every single LLVM
developer,
> > be it one working on the upstream LLVM, or some downstream fork,
> > or those just wishing to keep up with the project.
> > **There should be transparency and accountability.**
> >
> > The second question I would like to raise is:
> > the blog post claims transparent, first-class email support,
> > but the mailing list mode can not actually be toggled on.
> > There is just no such checkbox, unlike some other discourse forum.
> > For me personally, that is a deal-breaker, and unless I'm able to
> > keep up to date with the discussions in the lists format,
> > I'm simply going to stop following discussions, period.
> >
> > While, I, personally, have not had much hands-on experience with
> > LLVM's discourse, mainly it's email side, I hear the situation
> > is not what the blogpost claims it to be, and there are other things
> > that aren't "just work", and that was known months ago,
e.g.:
> >
>
https://llvm.discourse.group/t/discourse-as-mailing-list-replacement-some-questions/3713/4
> >
> > Given that the hard switch point of Feb 1'st has already been set,
> > and is less than a week away, i'd like to hear some clarification
> > as to what is going on, and strongly recommend doing either of the
> following:
> > * STOP migration(s) due to "false start", the end status
already being
> decided
> >    before the process even begun, and using the process just as a
means
> >    to legalize the decision made beforehand.
> > * postponing the switch by a month (until March 1'st), or however
long
> needed,
> >    effectively immediately, in order to make the migration actually
> possible
> >    by working out the issues that have come up during the migration.
> >
> > While what is written above is my personal view on things,
> > I do **not** believe the said view is unique to me.
> >
> > What are the foundation's thoughts on this?
> >
> > Roman
> > _______________________________________________
> > LLVM Developers mailing list
> > llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org
> > https://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev
> _______________________________________________
> LLVM Developers mailing list
> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org
> https://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev
>
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On 27/01/2022 00:47, Philip Reames via llvm-dev wrote:
> I want to chime in to say that Roman is definitely not alone in his 
> impressions here.  I have previously shared my objections to the 
> original proposal, and will not repeat myself.
> 
> I don't have the energy to engage in this discussion, and have already 
> decided to put up with this and deal with the fallout. Given that, 
> please do not expect further response from me on this topic.
I would like to make sure that we separate the two issues here:

  - The decision to move to Discourse.
  - The way in which decisions are made for the project.

There are a lot of problems with LLVM mailing lists.  People don't know 
which lists to post things on, things are cross-posted to cfe-dev and 
llvm-dev (for example) but not all replies go to both, which makes 
following discussions difficult because they essentially end up in two 
forks.  Some things only go to llvm-dev, so you have to subscribe to the 
fire hose and try to skip the 90% of messages that are likely to be 
irrelevant to you.

Given how low the bar is for the starting point, Discourse seems like it 
is definitely a less bad solution.  I'm even willing to accept that it 
is the least-bad solution currently available.

That said, I completely agree with the comments by Roman, Philip, and 
Renato in this thread.  This is not the first decision where my 
perception of the consensus of the broader LLVM community and the 
consensus of the folks that turn up to Silicon Valley socials have been 
in opposite directions and the group in the valley's decision has been 
pushed through with everyone else then having to live with the fallout.

There is a significant need for a more transparent decision process that 
reflects all stakeholders on multiple axes:

  - Industrial, academic, or individual contributors.
  - Contributors to core LLVM libraries, to tightly coupled components 
and to largely independent projects.
  - Direct LLVM contributors and downstream consumers.
  - Groups shipping a complete LLVM toolchain and those shipping some 
LLVM components.

The LLVM Foundation board is heavily skewed in most of these axes and, 
as a self-selecting entity, is not likely to address this without an 
intentional policy of doing so and without a broader effort to 
explicitly engage with the segments of the LLVM community that are not 
directly represented.

David