[llvm-dev] Non-meritocratic t.&a. projects will be damned. Re: I am leaving llvm

[Unnamed Poster via llvm-dev]

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Non-meritocratic technology and academic projects will be damned.


This is a general response to Renato's response to Rafael's post, and also to
the media discussion sparked by this thread at
http://www.businessinsider.com/programmers-debate-requirements-to-behave-respectfully-ccoc-2018-5
, continuation of this topic would need to be moved off-list:




Any high complexity technology or academic project involvoing more people needs
to follow a meritocratic model to survive and thrive.


In other words, within the project, your worth amounts to your past
contributions to the project and your present knowledge of all the project's
material technological and academic aspects.


Last years, a stress has been put on parts of the open source community to
submit to an agenda that is not technologically or academically motivated, but
instead is "socially" motivated.


What I see is that normally this ""social"" agenda reduces to the
cultural-marxist social control trick of coercing people to comply with "the
values", where "the values" may appear well-intended and "just" through being
codified in some written form, but in reality are arbitrary and actually
function as a control tool for parties that are not really contributing to the
project and who have no real preference for the project's advancement
whatsoever, but instead only want to prey on its good name to boost their
egoes.


Attempts to formalize a social code for participating in an open source
project, where factors that are not related to project merit are included such
as sexuality, ideology and ethnicity, will by its nature cause a competence
exodus, and left will be the legacy of what the previous productive
participants did before they were scared away by the "social conformists" who
now dominate.


Based on my own experience with many highest-competence software experts in
programming, software architecture and so on, I suggest that highly qualified
software people tend to have slightly unpolished personalities. This may be
primarily because these people's primary passion is to give all their energy to
bring progress to the technology and academic work, which is an all-consuming
task and leaves no energy-space left in a person to develop traits such as
being a drama queen, attention-seeking victim type, or other type that would
distract the project.


This social dynamic is deep, where highly qualified people tend to be less good
at managing social circumstances and therefore prefer to leave, while the less
qualified people envy the performance of the more qualified, and so the less
qualified try to prey on the more qualified up to the point that the project is
socially bankrupt.


The highly qualified people are in nature meritocrats because the tech and
academic details of the project is frequently the only thing they are really
fluent in, and any risk of being judged by any other standard than material
project merit would be felt as immensely offputting to them, and so hence the
competence exodus.


For this reason I suggest that if you think you need a social code, it reflects
that you have less-competent people on board and likely in charge already, and
the project's best interest would be to not encourage their participation and
instead encourage the participation of those who provenly do contribute.


If you fail, and Rafael's leaving is a strong indicator that you are quite far
down that slope already, then I hope some group that is smarter and better than
you will fork your project and bring the world the potentials lying in
LLVM/Clang that your particular social circle failed at providing.


You will never be able to stick a social policy to a project where technology
and academic progress matters.


If what you do would be contagious, you're also contributing to killing any
meaningful open forum ambitions in the open source community altogether.






Extended version:


If an open source project and the people who like to congregate on conferences,
are not attending based on merits quantified in code and academic
contributions, then the project is technically history and dead and there is
nothing of substance to confer about.




Rafael writes:
> 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.


This seems to be a case in point - LLVM used to be a focus of code and academic
process as in an interesting forum for technological and academic work.


Now that time has passed and what's left is "hot air", and people without
coding or academic edge can prey on LLVM's good name that was built up in the
past.


It's not uncommon for merit-lacking participants to coerce the whole extended
group into compliance with their control, which enforces the dead-shell model
of the project as noone with tech or academic aspirations possibly could find
inspiration or space for real work in such an environment.


What would you better give your energy to, stay home/at the office in peace to
work on making the project better, or attend a conference where some unkown
lunatic could attack you for transgressing an irrelevant policy?




Rafael writes:
> 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.


Renato writes:
> You'll see that this is not an LLVM trend, but a world wide trend and
> that's not a bad thing.


Renato, you are not correct. By justifying this gunk you're drawing on yourself
big problems for you and others.




Rafael:
> It is, and I wholeheartedly agree, an exaggerated and poisonous trend,
> but it's a response to an even more poisonous history and one that
> needed a change.


The poisonous history of working hard, with zero financial incentive or gain,
for the general public's benefit and for academic advancement, with no
guarantee whatsoever for success, and the freedom to discuss that process with
others who do the same?


If this is your risk model then I suggest you exit open source, there are
plenty positions in politics for you.




Renato:
> History is not stable, nor it's a steady progression. History happens
> in hiccups, step-function-like sudden increases in pressure, which are
> then followed by attenuated periodic function. This is one of them.


This is hot air.




Rafael:
> 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.


This is the control model of marxism and cultural marxism especially: You end
up with a doctrine saying that participants are required to comply with "the
values", to not be eliminated from participation.


Normally noone has a copy of "the values", or at least it's clear in practice
that "the values" are effectively unwritten, and this creates the perfect
breeding ground for the community to be taken over and run by total creeps.


The de-facto discontinuance of any real progress or results will be of no
bother to them.




Renato:
> I defended your point of view in the code of conduct, but I have come
> to accept what it is, not what it says. The code is just a statement
> and have not changed how we behave (I don't think you would ever be
> kicked out of a conference).


The meritocratic creed is that any good useful code commit or paper that is
submitted should be reviewed and if found to advance the material qualities of
the project, be included.


The function of a social environment is primarily to facilitate the interaction
between the people who are the most devoted to that technological and academic
work when and as they are doing exactly that.


A possible second function of a social environment would be to provide the time
and space for meeting between those who know more or are more up to date about
the tech and academic progress and who want to give time to sharing their
insights, to those for who in earnest want to learn more about it.




Renato:
> What I could not change and still fear is the report policy, which
> leaves no room for the accused to defend itself, or even know it's
> been accused. But that's not a discussion for this thread.


A report policy would reflect that your project has already failed, that for
some reason you are pulling drama queens and social profiteers already. Such
people have normally not done any good code or academic work in the first
place, as real work for creating progress and social drama are very different
forms of activity and normally a person who does one of those will not be very
good at the other.


I have a hard time seeing someone who is proven world-leading in a particular
technology or academic discipline, at the same time give energy to distract a
community.


In other words, intentionally or unintentionally you have recruited suckers.




Renato:
> However, the main point here is why we have it and who is doing it. I
> know Chandler and Tanya for a while and, while I do not speak for
> them, I trust them to *want* to do the right thing (tm).


If they need political or sexual codes for their "LLVM" conference, wish them
good luck with their social charity and have fun with their social
distractions.


At some point, some group of people who actually want a better compiler and who
want to work for it, will either fork LLVM to LLVN / LLVM2, or start from
scratch.




Renato:
> If they miss the mark, or make mistakes, I'd first point out to them,
> not assume ill intent. This has been my personal experience and I have
> no reason to change behaviour.


Again, if you lost grips of meritocracy so much in your tech-academic project
that you need ideological and sexual management, you are done and over with
already.




Renato:
> However, the main point here is why we have it and who is doing it. I
> know Chandler and Tanya for a while and, while I do not speak for
> them, I trust them to *want* to do the right thing (tm).


Social policies can be justified by beautifully-sounding, good intentions.


Why don't we criminialize thought crimes, the world would be a better place
without unnice thoughts, wouldn't it.


That particular persons have fallen prey for the temptation of censoring a
community according to principles that are irrelevant for the project, does not
mean they are faring with bad intentions.


You seem to already have lost yourself in trying to define a
technology-academic project in social terms and hence gotten distracted from
focus on progress.


Meanwhile, competent people intuitively feel really bad that their work is
preyed on as food for others' ego dramas that have been totally out of the
scope and intention of their work, and so you get competence exodus.




Renato:
> For what it's worth, so far, I have found the LLVM community fair and
> just on how it treats its citizens, as I have myself fell foul from
> ill behaviour of other members and that has been solved decently and
> properly.


A competent unnice person may be so as a way to emphasise to you that he is
doing you a free of charge favor by talking to you at all, and that it's on
your table to do homework.


I suggest that a common quality among people who have real expertise, have
slightly edgy characters, as their energy has gone into the passion of their
interest rather than to polishing their social interaction skills.


Noone is forcing you to spend time with them. You can run your own Victims
Anonymous or any other project you like, without them.




Reading, studying and testing sourcecode yourself at home may be for you.


Meeting people who have accomplished stuff, is a privilege and not a right.




Real transgression such as physical violence or physical harassment have
already been codified by applicable law and would be dealt with by the police
and courts, and do not need your extensions.




Renato:
> It's really hard to find places that will fund developers, especially
> young ones and the ones that have no other opportunity. But we have to
> be careful with whom sponsors our devs and why.


Who said anyone would fund you? You are your own.


LLVM is a highly complex software project. If apart from paying the smartest,
best and most knowledgeable people you can find to bring LLVM development work
the highest practical value possible, you also want to appoint some junior
trainee in the hope that he'd learn quickly, then I hope that you would not use
that effort as a vehicle for a political e.g. marxist agenda, you can obviously
use it to rant unendingly about how good you are, but it will not help the
project or bring anything than unease to those who are really devoted to its
technological and academic advancement.




Renato:
> I truly believe the "fix" for this problem is: let's talk. Not here,
> this is the dev list, but let's create a place where we can discuss
> these things.


If anyone who really would like to contribute code or academically to LLVM has
emotions that distract them from doing so, then sure as a separate act of
charity maybe someone can give some time to discuss and to bring comfort to
that person.




Participating in LLVM or any other interaction with others, is a privilege and
not a right.


The act of committing world-class technology expertise into a project, does not
come with strings attached, such as an obligation to interact with anyone for
any reason.


If you want to learn something and others don't want to share their knowledge,
then offer them something, for instance payment. If they don't accept your
price offer, then offer them a higher pay.




You will never be able to stick a social policy to a project where technology
and academic progress matters.


I hope you are seeing the writing on the wall of this symbolic death-throe for
your project as one of your most accomplished developers now has thrown in the
towel.


Based on what you write, your project is over.




If what you do would be contagious, you're also contributing to killing any
meaningful open forum ambitions in the open source community altogether.