[llvm-dev] RFC: Moving toward Discord and Discourse for LLVM's discussions

Tue Nov 19 07:14:25 PST 2019

Hi Chandler and Meike.

Great that you look into lower barriers for new (and existing) members, thanks!
To add what Chris brought up, besides the licensing of what we say on the platform, there is another aspect of T&C that should be considered. Discord's T&C allows only non-commercial use, unless they've given a written approval. I'm curious if that is going to hinder the adoption of Discord for people that are employed by for-profit organizations. I'm not a lawyer, so I've no clue how much of a problem this is in reality.

Discourse seems more friendly towards user of for-profit organizations and it's T&C are less aggressive than Discord. It also allows people to keep using email if they prefer. Sounds less contentious. I've not looked in detail, but I'll probably happy to use that instead of mailing lists.

Christof

From: llvm-dev <llvm-dev-bounces at lists.llvm.org> On Behalf Of Chris Bieneman via llvm-dev
Sent: 19 November 2019 02:01
To: David Chisnall <David.Chisnall at cl.cam.ac.uk>
Cc: llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org
Subject: Re: [llvm-dev] RFC: Moving toward Discord and Discourse for LLVM's discussions

David,

I'm glad you mentioned Discord's T&Cs. I'm not generally concerned about these kinds of things, but Discord's seems particularly aggressive. Particularly the phrase "perpetual, nonexclusive, transferable, royalty-free, sublicensable, and worldwide license" is... a lot. Since LLVM is a permissively licensed project I assume many of our contributors care about licensing, and that might be a shared concern.

Since people have mentioned Slack on this thread, have you by chance looked at Slack's ToS? The similar wording from Slack's ToS is, "worldwide, non-exclusive, limited term license", which seems a lot less grabby. Would you be less resistant to Slack?

-Chris

On Nov 18, 2019, at 1:48 AM, David Chisnall via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org<mailto:llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>> wrote:

Hi Chandler,

One of the things that came up in our discussion at the WiCT workshop as a barrier for new members of the community was the fact that key decisions are often made at round tables at developer meetings without involvement of the wider community, particularly the large fraction that is not able to travel to the West Coast.  More broadly, the opacity of the LLVM Project decision making was raised as something that is problematic when attempting to build a wider and more diverse community.

I therefore find it slightly ironic that this is being announced after a 10-person discussion at an ancillary workshop that was attached to the main DevMeeting.  This seems like a trend in the wrong direction.

While I am in general in favour of creating new channels to extend the reach of the community, I don't believe that something like this that requires existing community members to participate to be useful should be launched without a wider discussion.  This paragraph in your announcement stood out:

> We talked to a bunch of people and looked at the options out there and
> the most promising ones were Discord for chatting and Discourse for
> longer-form discussions.

Who are these 'bunch of people'?  Why were they selected to make this decision (and by whom)?

Note that I don't object to the creation of a Discord server (though the 'YOUR CONTENT' section of the T&Cs contains clauses that I'm unwilling to agree to and so I won't be participating), only to the process through which it was set up.

David

On 18/11/2019 07:48, Chandler Carruth via llvm-dev wrote:

Hello everyone,
*Short version:
*I've set up an LLVM Discord server for real time chat (similar to IRC) and an LLVM Discourse server for forums (similar to email lists):
https://discord.gg/xS7Z362
https://llvm.discourse.group/
Please join and use these new services. They are only partially set up and still very new, so don't hesitate to improve them and/or reach out to this thread with any issues you see or things you want to fix. Also, both services have dedicated feedback channels.
Do feel free to use Discourse for technical discussions, although try not to create duplicate discussions (any more than you would between the lists and Bugzilla) and make sure the people you're having the discussion with are fine using Discourse instead of the email list. In case Discourse doesn't work out, we'll collect and archive everything so it isn't lost.
*Longer version & more details:
*During this year's Women in Compilers and Tools meeting, folks expressed very clearly that our communication systems cause a non-trivial amount of friction for new people trying to find out about, learn, or contribute to LLVM. Both IRC for chatting and mailing lists for longer-form discussions are unfamiliar, difficult, and often intimidating for newcomers. While I have long been a fan and resistant to change in these areas, the feedback from folks at WiCT was compelling and important for us as a community to address. Even if it means I have to let go of my precious IRC. ;]
We talked to a bunch of people and looked at the options out there and the most promising ones were Discord for chatting and Discourse for longer-form discussions. Meike and I have set up both an initial Discord and Discourse server. You can find them here:
https://discord.gg/xS7Z362
https://llvm.discourse.group/
There is still a lot of work to be done. Notably, it'd be great for folks to clean up and improve the summaries for each of the groups in Discourse, and I'll be asking various people to help moderate on both Discourse and Discord. If you'd like to help out with a specific set of improvements to these, don't hesitate to reach out to me or Meike and we can get you set up. Some specific things we're already working on:
 * Getting Discord verified with a nice URL.
 * Archives of mailing lists on Discourse so you can search in one
   place, etc.
     o See the plan here:
       https://llvm.discourse.group/t/mirroring-and-archiving-llvm-mailing-lists-on-discourse/61
 * Moving Discourse to forums.llvm.org<http://forums.llvm.org/> <http://forums.llvm.org<http://forums.llvm.org/>>.
 * Documenting the best way to move to Discourse while preserving a
   similarly email-focused workflow.
We're just adding these for now, but I'd like people to seriously try using them. While IRC has served us fairly well, I think it is one of the bigger barriers to entry. Our email lists are more effective, but also have had serious infrastructure challenges over the years: a constant flow of spam, bouncing for several major email providers, etc. Discourse has very powerful email-based workflows available and I think we should seriously consider moving to Discourse long-term instead of the email lists.
I also want to say thanks to all the folks at the WiCT workshop for giving me and others feedback. I was pretty set in my ways around these kind of things, but hearing the kinds of challenges this has posed to people less established in the community was a real eye opener. It takes a lot to speak up like this, and I really appreciate it. I hope this also helps start to address these long-standing issues. Also a huge thanks to Tanya for organizing the WICT workshop and Meike for helping drive this message home to me and doing a bunch of the work getting these things set up. I wouldn't have been able to do it without her help, especially around Discord bots.
-Chandler
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