[llvm-dev] RFC: Code Review Process

[Philip Reames via llvm-dev]

+1 to Renato's response here.  I had the same thought, and Renato 
phrased it much better than I'd have managed.

Philip

On 10/5/21 9:47 AM, Renato Golin via llvm-dev wrote:
> On Tue, 5 Oct 2021 at 17:06, Tom Stellard via llvm-dev 
> <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org <mailto:llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>> wrote:
>
>     - Any other information that you think will help the Board of
>     Directors make the best decision. 
>
>     - Foundation Board will have 30 days to make a final decision
>     about using GitHub Pull Requests and then communicate a migration
>     plan to the community.
>
>
> Hi Tom,
>
> Please help me here, I think I'm severely misunderstanding what this 
> means...
>
> I'm reading it that the "Board of Directors" will make a decision and 
> communicate to the community, apparently through some undisclosed 
> internal process.
>
> For example:
>  * What about people that are on holidays during the 30 days comment 
> period?
>  * What if the points are not made clear after 30 days?
>  * How do we know the IWG will correctly summarise the comments to the 
> board?
>  * How does the board guarantee it will take all facts in 
> consideration without bias?
>  * What kind of recourse would the community have if the decision 
> alienates a large part of the developers?
>
> Please understand that I'm not assuming malice *at all*. We're all 
> humans, and in the effort to make some change happen we quite often 
> let unconscious bias be the merits of our decisions.
>
> For context...
>
> Since its inception[1], the foundation has always steered away from 
> technical decisions, always referring to the llvm-dev list for those. 
> Previous long running contentious issues (Github, monorepo, CoC) were 
> all decided by the community, in the llvm-dev list, and executed by 
> the foundation.
>
> Recent discussions about the mailing list, irc, discord, discourse 
> have emphasised that, even with an infrastructure working group, the 
> views of the community are still too hard to predict and make it work 
> for the majority. Neither the board of directors, nor the IWG are wide 
> and diverse enough to make decisions that take most people's views 
> into consideration. That is why we still rely on the dev list for 
> large technical discussions and decisions.
>
> Code review and bug tracking are very much technical decisions. Not 
> code directly, but how we all work. And there are a lot of us. Giving 
> feedback and having no insight into the decision making process will 
> certainly divide the community even more, if we're forced to accept 
> whatever outcome.
>
> I can't see how this "solves" the problem of never-ending discussions, 
> other than further fragmenting the community.
>
> cheers,
> --renato
>
> [1] http://blog.llvm.org/2014/04/the-llvm-foundation.html 
> <http://blog.llvm.org/2014/04/the-llvm-foundation.html>
>
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