[llvm-dev] I am leaving llvm

[Peter Collingbourne via llvm-dev]

Hi Rafael,

I am sorry to hear that you are leaving, and I wanted to thank you for your
excellent technical contributions to LLVM over the years. I hope I will be
able to see you again the next time I am in Toronto.

All the best,
Peter

On Wed, May 2, 2018 at 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/
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>



-- 
-- 
Peter
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