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Programming

One Of LLVM's Top Contributors Quits Development Over Code of Conduct, Outreach Program (phoronix.com) 1235

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

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 03, 2018 @12:48PM (#56547428)

    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.

    • by psm321 ( 450181 ) on Thursday May 03, 2018 @01:01PM (#56547526) Journal
      Careful, hugs may violate a code of conduct! [theregister.co.uk]
    • by GWBasic ( 900357 ) <`slashdot' `at' `andrewrondeau.com'> on Thursday May 03, 2018 @01:59PM (#56548210) Homepage

      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... [outreachy.org])

      • by PhrostyMcByte ( 589271 ) <phrosty@gmail.com> on Thursday May 03, 2018 @02:27PM (#56548520) Homepage

        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.

        You're pointing to a specific outreach program, not to LLVM's entire intern program.

        • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 03, 2018 @03:08PM (#56548864)

          No, he was pointing to the generic Outreachy program rules. The rules that ALL partner orgs, such as LLVM, must adhere to. Did you not even bother to read before commenting?

          The LLVM COC tolerates both racism and sexism as long as they are committed against a white male.
          From the LLVM COC:

          Our open source community prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort. We will not act on complaints regarding:
          ‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’
          Reasonable communication of boundaries, such as “leave me alone,” “go away,” or “I’m not discussing this with you”
          Refusal to explain or debate social justice concepts
          Communicating in a ‘tone’ you don’t find congenial
          Criticizing racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behavior or assumptions

        • 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.

          You're pointing to a specific outreach program, not to LLVM's entire intern program.

          So LLVM only discriminates part of the time. What percentage of discrimination is OK? 10%, 25%, 49%, ...?

        • You're pointing to a specific outreach program, not to LLVM's entire intern program.

          The link points to an ad that is blatantly ILLEGAL under American law.

          Prohibited Practices [eeoc.gov]: It is illegal for an employer to publish a job advertisement that shows a preference for or discourages someone from applying for a job because of his or her race, color, religion, sex (including gender identity, sexual orientation, and pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information.

  • Outreach (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DaMattster ( 977781 ) on Thursday May 03, 2018 @12:52PM (#56547456)
    I think outreach is a good thing. I don't see how actively encouraging diversity is a bad thing. I do believe that prolonged preferential treatment given to one population over another is not good. There are good reasons for short term preferential treatment in order to build a diversity, but after a while, preferential treatment versus evaluating someone based on their merits, causes problems.
    • Re:Outreach (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Vapula ( 14703 ) on Thursday May 03, 2018 @01:06PM (#56547584)

      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...

    • by davide marney ( 231845 ) on Thursday May 03, 2018 @01:33PM (#56547908) Journal

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

      "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.

  • He's not wrong (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 03, 2018 @12:56PM (#56547482)

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

  • Part of a Norm (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 03, 2018 @01:03PM (#56547558)

    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.

    • Your thesis picks things selectively and then posits a reason for what is really your selection rather than objective fact. For example, your Star Wars toy line doesn't include any memory of Jar Jar toys.
  • Actual Quote (Score:5, Informative)

    by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Thursday May 03, 2018 @01:05PM (#56547568)

    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... [llvm.org]

    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.

    • Re:Actual Quote (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Thursday May 03, 2018 @01:17PM (#56547692) Homepage Journal
      I don't know much about Outreachy. But a program that encourages participation by women and minorities requiring that funding candidates actually be women or minorities doesn't seem at all out of place for the purpose of the organization.
    • Re:Actual Quote (Score:5, Interesting)

      by im_thatoneguy ( 819432 ) on Thursday May 03, 2018 @01:24PM (#56547794)

      Ok, so he's not anti-woman and anti-minority, he's anti-outreach to women and minorities to encourage them to participate.

      There's an important difference that was cited on the SO post last week between tolerance and inclusiveness. We shouldn't just be tolerating people, we should be welcoming. If you invite someone to your party and they don't know anyone and everyone else is friends you could say "I did enough! I invited them, it's up to them now!" but we all know how uncomfortable it can be, especially if they are shy, to approach a group of people they don't know. Inclusiveness is not just inviting someone and tolerating their presence but saying "Hey, thanks for coming here are some people I would like you to meet that I think you would get along well."

      He's objecting to the fact that there is an organization that focuses on people just showing up to the party and don't know anyone. While it's true even straight white males from the united states need those same introductions to be included, there are numerous networks that already are performing that duty well. While they may not be explicitly stated as their goal to be "Helping straight white men from America find a welcoming place in the community." the outcome is that they are really well designed to do that. And that's fine too. But we can't pretend that those organizations don't exist.

      This is by the way the UNIX philosophy "Do one thing well". It's great that we have lots of organizations that have organically developed to help one specific set of people (nerdy guys) find a place in open source. But having separate organizations that are focused on different problems is what the Unix Philosophy applied to recruitment recommends.

      • by bahwi ( 43111 )

        It's the twisting of the word "discrimination" to be always bad. Discrimination is something everyone does everyday. How is it being used? Just to exclude women and minorities? That's bad. Are your discriminating against a restauraunt that was in the news for an E. coli outbreak? That's not a bad use of discrimination or unreasonable.

        For awhile people knew contexts, but lots of people think there is no context now.

        • It's the twisting of the word "discrimination" to be always bad. Discrimination is something everyone does everyday. How is it being used? Just to exclude women and minorities? That's bad.

          Read it. He's explicitly against discriminating based on sex and ancestry.

          Are you discriminating against a restauraunt that was in the news for an E. coli outbreak? That's not a bad use of discrimination or unreasonable.

          He supports discrimination based on merit. You've said absolutely nothing useful here . . . not about Rafael, anyway.

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

      Ah, but it's all about who you exclude ... excluding currently disfavored groups is just peachy.

      They literally have institutions that overtly discriminate. But they are "bravely" against ancient institutional discrimination that ended long before they were born.

    • by Vapula ( 14703 )

      Basically, by participating to the outreach program, the project is spending money on a most likely sub-par developper (if it was not a sub-par developper, it would not require the outreach program to get a job)

      And the new code of conduct will prevent other to make critics of that sub-par developper...

      End result
      - loss of money that could have been better spend
      - loss of time for the other developpers who will need to fix sub-par code from that developper

      Add that comments around the CoC explicitely says tha

  • Code Vs Emotion (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 03, 2018 @01:08PM (#56547602)

    I get it, and I agree with him. If I were the main creator of something, and suddenly instead of being all about code, working out logic facts and figures everything started to be about how people 'feel' then I'd get the hell away from that hot mess too.

    We are looking to create, not to socialize. Placing socializing as a top priority on a logic problem over getting work done is insane.

    The other thing is, we do not all want to be nice all the time. If I am just a volunteer contributor then I should be able to be racist, mysoginistic, all inclusive, homosexual, heterosexual, pansexual or any shade of human you prefer. What these directives are doing is attempting to tell us all how to think feel and act which has nothing to do with coding logic or creating. They want us to be someone we are not to fit a narrative of reality which we do not even really know is good or bad in the long run, we just know it's popular think at this moment in time.

    At any rate, you can all demonize him all you like but the man volunteered for 12 solid years, did an amazing job and has decided to leave causing a gaping hole and potentially the death of the entire project. If they were looking to help the projects then they have failed by alienating the developers.

    • If you are looking to create, and can only create alone because respecting other folks is inimical to you, that's your problem. If you object to an organization that was out to encourage participation by women and minorities insisting that funded candidates actually be women or minorities, that is also your problem. In that case, yeah, you can only create alone now because reasonable people aren't going to put up with you any longer. Maybe you need a long walk and some thinking about your own attitude.

  • by sbrown123 ( 229895 ) on Thursday May 03, 2018 @01:25PM (#56547808) Homepage

    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?!

  • Makes sense to me (Score:4, Insightful)

    by WaffleMonster ( 969671 ) on Thursday May 03, 2018 @01:28PM (#56547842)

    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.

    [1] http://lists.llvm.org/pipermai... [llvm.org]
    [2] https://www.outreachy.org/appl... [outreachy.org]

    What if the group was "white straight dudes under 30 only" would giving money to this group still be ok?

    It's rather rich to preach tolerance of other tribes and at the same time actively promote and give money to clubs whose only requirement for belonging is tribal purity.

    I don't see how it is possible to preach tolerance while actively supporting and funding tribalism while not becoming a hypocrite in the process.

    If you want more diversity or whatever there are ways to get there that don't involve nurturing tribalism.

    • by Cyberax ( 705495 ) on Thursday May 03, 2018 @04:17PM (#56549492)
      Are there any real outreach organizations for white straight dudes 30-s only?

      And you're the reason Outreachy is needed. Right now minorities are severely disadvantaged - they are less likely to get a good education, less likely to have access to computers when young, less likely to have a supportive social environment and so on. These disadvantages are real. They're there. They are inarguable.

      If you know a way to compensate for them, so that a Latino kid with immigrant parents living in a ghetto neighborhood in Detroit would have equal opportunities with a white male from San Francisco then I would like to hear it.
  • by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Thursday May 03, 2018 @01:30PM (#56547864) Journal

    I'm not surprised that this stuff turns some people off and causes them to say "fine, enough is enough. I was here for the code."

    Most free software projects, nobody ever even sees you. If they don't seem to like your contributions, it's probably not because they are big wacist toxic masculine meanie weenies.

  • Relevance? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Locke2005 ( 849178 ) on Thursday May 03, 2018 @01:34PM (#56547922)
    What ever happened to, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog"? Diversity is irrelevant when you only know people by their email addresses! Just because I'm using the name of an old white philosopher doesn't mean I'm not a young black instagram model!
  • by davide marney ( 231845 ) on Thursday May 03, 2018 @01:40PM (#56547984) Journal

    As we've learned before, Google sees itself as being on some kind of social mission. They are not content to just give you good products and services, they intentionally USE those to influence you. I think this is an excellent case in point. If your skin color is not one that Outreachy likes, no internship for you. Likewise with your sexual preferences.

    What does ANY of this have to do with writing good code? Absolutely nothing. It's all about Google and Friends using their platforms to force their belief systems on the rest of us.

    It is very near time to ditch Google, to say nothing of the other technology giants. They're not content to stay in their lane and make good products, now they want to EVANGELIZE. If I want evangelism, I go to church.

  • by JimToo ( 1304315 ) on Thursday May 03, 2018 @01:47PM (#56548074)

    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.

  • From the article (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DaveV1.0 ( 203135 ) on Thursday May 03, 2018 @02:06PM (#56548290) Journal

    Seems to me he was upset about people prying into him:

    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.

    I don't want anyone interrogating me about my beliefs and views, so I don't blame him for leaving

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