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One Of LLVM's Top Contributors Quits Development Over Code of Conduct, Outreach Program (phoronix.com)

Rafael Avila de Espindola is the fifth most active contributor to LLVM with more than 4,300 commits since 2006, but now he has decided to part ways with the project. From a report: Rafael posted a rather lengthy mailing list message to fellow LLVM developers today entitled I am leaving llvm. He says the reason for abandoning LLVM development after 12 years is due to changes in the community. In particular, the "social injustice" brought on the organization's new LLVM Code of Conduct and its decision to participate in this year's Outreachy program to encourage women and other minority groups to get involved with free software development. "I am definitely sad to lose Rafael from the LLVM project, but it is critical to the long term health of the project that we preserve an inclusive community. I applaud Rafael for standing by his personal principles, this must have been a hard decision," Chris Lattner, tweeted Thursday.

19 of 1,235 comments (clear)

  1. All we need are healing hugs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    His loss is of great benefit, in the long run. Anyone who would get mad like this is unfit for software development in the modern world. LLVM needs more hugs and less time and focus spent on boring old dry compiler code.

    1. Re:All we need are healing hugs by GWBasic · · Score: 5, Informative

      He's leaving because the intern program openly discriminates based on gender, sexual orientation, or ancestry. Basically, they won't hire a white American male as an intern. (See https://www.outreachy.org/appl...)

  2. He's not wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The requirements to be able to contributed to a project should be based on merit alone.

  3. Part of a Norm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    As usual, SJW-ism has an effect of demonetization and loss of trust from the normal majority consumers, leading to loss.
    - Hasbro for example managed to bankrupt the GI Joe brand by employing SJW writers into their comic, ruining the brand value.
    - Marvel keeps losing money over the new female "muh womyn power" Captain Marvel, who keeps being rehashed and forced in apparent desperation yet keeps failing and not making returns.
    - Disney's Star Wars has now lost trust among prop sellers, a first in the brand's history. Shelves are filled with unsold TLJ "womyn powa" toys which are going to be written off as a major financial loss for both the sellers and Disney. Now sellers have no alternative but to scrutinize all future Disney's Bolshevik marketing projections and force increased costs on Disney as a risk tax. Disney even lost a potential market of 1.3 billion people in China which cites "Baizuo" and "Low IQ (SJW) writing" as critiques.
    - Video Game developers appealing to a vocal minority of SJW's who don't even pay for games but rather gather around a single "representative" professional critic/influencer via bubbled social contacts to engage in mob criticism/coercion, who are merely there to support that one career critic against products they don't even care about; resulting in a loss of the core majority of consumers and a net loss in revenue due to appeal to vocal minority over majority.
    It's like the religious preachers who exist to preach against products they don't use with fellow church member mobs, yet who are mistaken in ignorance by the object of criticism as consumers.
    - FreeBSD suddenly forcibly coercing/demanding from users to become political "ambassadors" by a Code of Conduct copy pasted from some feminist wiki, completely unrelated to the object of the community or their initial interests in becoming part of it. Result? Skilled staff loss.
    - SJW publications such as Salon forced into adwall.
    - The GNOME foundation running short on money because they wasted it on "The Outreach Program for Women" and such social (in)justice investments.

    Examples keep on appearing exponentially with each day.

  4. Actual Quote by Kunedog · · Score: 5, Informative

    He says the reason for abandoning LLVM development after 12 years is due to changes in the community. In particular, the "social injustice" brought on the organization's new LLVM Code of Conduct and its decision to participate in this year's Outreachy program to encourage women and other minority groups to get involved with free software development.

    This paraphrase deliberately attempts to mislead the reader into thinking he is anti-woman and anti-minority.

    http://lists.llvm.org/pipermai...

    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.

    He is in fact against discrimination and Outreachy's exclusionary nature.

  5. Re:Outreach by Vapula · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Well what outreach does is nothing but discrimination... and is somehow as bad as other discriminating behaviour...

    and Outreach can backfire... The one hired thanks to Outreach may be felt as inferior who needed to put their "diversity" in front to get a job because he is lacking true skills...

    Outreach is a bad idea...

  6. Re:LLVM code of conduct by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I have recently seen a high-profile community project where a key engineer believed (among other things) women should be shielded and kept at home. This engineer, obviously, had conflicts with people in the organization. Actually maybe about 30 people. Eventually, the membership walked off en mass and founded their own project. The new project has essentially the same code of conduct we're discussing here.

    You need rules on paper for when stuff like this happens. It helps make slippery stuff like who offended who and whether such offense is out of scope for the project a lot easier to decide.

  7. Re: Meet minimum standards of human behavior by 110010001000 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why would you treat someone as an equal or with respect just because they have boobs or have a certain skin color? Very odd. People should be treated as equals and/or with respect if they deserve to be based on their behavior. I wouldn't treat Donald Trump with respect, because he doesn't deserve it. It doesn't matter if he has boobs or if his skin color was different.

  8. Ubuntu and Python CoC is about as bad by sbrown123 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They actually have this in their CoC:

    "Our open source community prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort. "

    They follow by saying they condone "reversism's". In other words if you are white male or female you can be openly harassed within the community because you are considered privileged. What the hell has happened to these projects?!

  9. Yeah, this is what he's talking about. by davide+marney · · Score: 5, Informative

    From https://www.outreachy.org/appl...

    "Outreachy Eligibility Rules

    You must meet one of the following criteria:

    You live any where in the world and you identify as a woman (cis or trans), trans man, or genderqueer person (including genderfluid or genderfree).

    You live in the United States or you are a U.S. national or permanent resident living aboard, AND you are a person of any gender who is Black/African American, Hispanic/Latin@, Native American/American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander"

    So, there you go. If your skin color isn't acceptable, no internship for you.

    --
    "We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
  10. Code of Conduct is a Symptom by JimToo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The code of conduct doesn't just land from Mars. It's the result of various people in the team agitating for change. The CoC might well be being promoted to give people who have a political agenda, not a coding agenda, the opportunity to gain more control.

    Software rewards a high degree of discipline, a coherent technical approach. It's sometimes necessary to prune code contributions that are rubbish in spite of the fact that this might hurt someone's feelings of self-worth. When this happens its easier to blame another's bias than your own incompetence.

    It would be interesting to know the level of code contribution, and its quality, from the promoters of the CoC.

  11. Re:LLVM code of conduct by Solandri · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Oh, and they're participating in an outreach program to encourage under-represented demographics to participate in open source project.

    It upsets some people because you're assuming that the under-representation is due to some flaw which needs to be corrected. i.e. You're assuming correlation implies causation. Applying the scientific method, the under-representation merely suggests that discrimination may be to blame, but is not proof in itself. One would need to first prove that the under-representation is caused by discrimination, before corrective action is justified. But instead, the under-representation itself is incorrectly being used as "evidence" that corrective action is necessary.

    Also your corrective action is blatant favoritism which would be decried as evil and discriminatory if it went the other way. i.e. You're trying to fight one type of discrimination by encouraging a different type of discrimination. This accomplishes the primary goal, e.g. getting people to realize it's wrong to discriminate against women. But it has the unfortunate side-effect of making some people conclude it's OK to discriminate against men. So you're not exactly reducing discrimination, you just replacing one type with another. And your corrective action will result in a long-term oscillation between different forms of discrimination, with no real reduction in the absolute total amount of discrimination. If you want to teach people that discrimination is wrong, you can't do it with programs which encourage different types of discrimination.

  12. Re: Meet minimum standards of human behavior by 110010001000 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If that is "the point" then why doesn't it say that in the CoC? I do love your addition about "slightly more so" though. We are all equal, but some people are more equal than others I guess. Truly Orwellian.

    "If you can't effectively call out someone's idiocy without mentioning their their race or gender"

    Huh? Who said anything about doing that?

    "In addition, if you can't call someone's idiocy in a social setting without being unnecessarily cruel and disrespectful"

    Huh? Who said anything about that? You SJW types are really truly scary.

  13. Re:SJWs Value Tech Only as a Tool to Spread Bigotr by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The highest contributor is Chris Lattner. I'm willing to bet he's the founder/leader of llvm. I also willing bet it's his wife/girlfriend/sister/unspecified_relative Tanya Lattner who is responsible for this bullshit. It was her, after all, who wanted to partner up with that puke-inducing Outreachy organization that specifically discriminates against whites or cisgendered men. I don't see her name on that list of top contributors in TFA, so I suppose this is how she contributes to the project instead?

    May this project crash, burn and rise from its ashes as a fork run by a meritocratically-minded group where the only property of your skin that matters is its thickness, your gender is only a problem if you make it one, and the only disability that gets you sympathy is RSI.

  14. Re: Meet minimum standards of human behavior by Sarten-X · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The problem is that "disrespect" is based on the perception, rather than the intent, and there's an inherent conflict of interest in a review setting (like in any quality-control process or collaborative effort).

    I'm very passionate about what I do. It's part of what makes me good at what I do, because I actually care about doing a good job, rather than just hitting the magic "40" on my time card and getting a paycheck. I will not hesitate to call out anyone's stupid failures. Mistakes or lack-of-training issues are fine, and we will accept those and move on, but failure due to being inattentive or simply lazy is not acceptable, and anyone failing in such a way needs to be aware that they're not performing up to the standards expected of my team. Frankly, I don't care what gender you are (or aren't), or how old you are, or your socioeconomic status, or really any other factor than whether you do the job. In my opinion, I'm perfectly in compliance with any nondiscrimination policy, because I don't discriminate.

    To someone else's perspective, though, they think I'm complaining because they're black, or Jewish, or young, or blonde, or whatever particular insecurity they want to call out, because they're too inattentive to understand that they were actually doing something wrong.

    The moment discrimination is brought up, especially in an enterprise with a "Code of Conduct" that is venerated above producing quality results, it's no longer a discussion about the right way to actually do the job. It's a discussion about sensitivity, and framing discussion, and having nice polite conversations with 3 HR reps and two managers, at whatever time they can all fit a discussion into their schedules. By the time that discussion takes place, the same failures have been repeated three times, and now there's a quality-control issue that needs to be addressed. Of course, that actual process issue has now become "normal", and any further complaint about the failure is just more "harassment".

    In the end, the person who noticed the original problem is punished, the problem persists, and weeks of effort are wasted on what could have been fixed in five minutes of candid discussion. There have been many cases where this process has itself been abused to attack anyone who dares to complain about someone who is more skilled at gaming the management than actually doing their job.

    As an alternative to a flawed "Code of Conduct", I suggest simply an environment of open failures, along the following lines:

    • If you screw up and you realize it, tell the team.
    • If you see someone else screw up, tell them or the team lead.
    • If you are told you screwed up, you are responsible for finding the document that describes the process.
    • Calling out someone who is, in fact, correct according to the documentation is itself a screwup.
    • Anyone on the team may contribute to the documentation.
    • Every day that you work with this team, you are joining a team. Everyone here is useful in some manner, regardless of whether or not you know what that manner is. You do not have the right to question anyone's participation in this team, though you may question how they do it as described above.

    In short, if you want to say someone's wrong, it had better be something that's either not yet documented, or the document supports your opinion. It's very difficult to put discrimination into writing without making it obvious, especially when it's a document that anyone else can fix. At the same time, encouraging people to admit their own mistakes prevents hero worship and excessive egos. It's much easier to take a complaint when you know that your competency is not also under attack.

    --
    You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
  15. Re:Meet minimum standards of human behavior by robkeeney · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So you are all for discrimination against disfavored groups, as long as they're the groups you disfavor?

  16. Re: Meet minimum standards of human behavior by Cederic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The problem is that the sentence reads exactly the same whether you use the word 'reverse' in it or not.

  17. Re:Meet minimum standards of human behavior by mi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If he can't agree to those minimum standards of acceptable behavior, then sure he shouldn't be admitted to the conference.

    This is bullshit, and you know it. First of all, having to explicitly agree to this to attend a conference is like having to pledge allegiance every time to get food in a mess hall (as mocked so brilliantly in Catch-22 — great read).

    How would like you like a daily popup on /. asking you to promise not to molest children today? Your probably would not... But, if you can't agree to that (much lower!) minimum standard of behavior, why should you be allowed to have Internet?

    Seriously, like most corporations, LLVM has no separation of powers. The same people writing the Code of Conduct, are the ones enforcing it... Having it simply gives them a weapon to enforce their point of view.

    And we know — from their choosing to associate with the trash like Outreachy — what that point of view is...

    "Common sense is not too common" goes the saying. The code asks you to be "respectful" — what does it mean? If one were to show up to a conference in a T-shirt with a picture of AR-15, or a portrait of President Trump, would that be Ok? I've worked with people IRL, who'd file a complaint with Human Resources over such a thing — because they'd "feel unsafe". And it could get worse!

    Likewise, what if a woman encounters an obvious man in a female bathroom — because he is "genderfluid" and felt feminine at the moment the nature called? Would the woman's negative reaction be "disrespectful"? By the standards of the Social Justice assholes, who'd consider yoga practice to be racist, it certainly would be...

    We've been slowly boiled by these asshole for years. This man is a hero for raising awareness of this growing threat to our freedom.

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
  18. Re: Meet minimum standards of human behavior by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But this CoC goes much further than just prohibiting insults. It's a direct assault on certain political, religious, philosophical beliefs and attitudes that one may hold and espouse outside of the project.

    For instance, the welcoming clause mentions supporting everyone regardless of their "immigration status". I assume that means if your status is considered to be illegal (or undocumented if you prefer) you are still welcome in the project. But suppose there is an LLVM developer who is politically opposed to DACA (in the US) and supports a moratorium on taking in refugees from certain countries with majority Muslim populations. And suppose that LLVM developer has contributed money to PAC's and political campaigns in support of his position on those issues. And also suppose that - using his real name on the internet - he posts messages on various social media platforms that espouse said political positions. And also suppose that he's never once made a statement about immigration at any LLVM conference, or on any LLVM mailing list, or irc channel, or any other LLVM community venue. IOW, he's completely separated his political view on immigration from his work and communications with others in the LLVM community. He kept it separate until that one time when he was asked about his views by another developer at a LLVM conference who happened to be involved in immigration activism and truthfully explained his position.

    My question: Did the LLVM developer commit a CoC violation?