[llvm-dev] LLVM Discourse migration: goals justify means?

[Roman Lebedev via llvm-dev]

Hi all.

As most of us here learned on Jan 7, apparently, we,
the LLVM community, have overwhelmingly supported
the decision to move to Discourse.

It already raises a question as to how said decision was made,
and what exactly said "majority of the community" is.
While it is true that the LLVM RFC process is unclear at best,
in this particular case the problem becomes exceptionally egregious.

While it may be a selection bias, as a data point,
everybody, that i regularly talk to, in #llvm IRC
were just as surprised to learn of said development as I was.

There was no indication on e.g. llvm-dev@,
and in fact the last mention of the migration was:
https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/cfe-dev/2021-June/068449.html
(over half a year ago!), but even if you just look at said thread,
there were certain comments that weren't addressed, e.g.
https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/cfe-dev/2021-June/068406.html

Hopefully, the "vote" wasn't held at the discourse itself,
otherwise it very much mirrors certain recent & future world events,
and does not paint the LLVM in a good light.

I'm fearful that the same story is bound to happen yet again
with GitHub Pull Request migration, that all the multitude of complaints
that were received each time they were requested (and that happened
a number of times, hopefully not to exhaust those providing said feedback!)
will be just swept away and ignored, and the switch be pushed through
regardless, in the name of a noble "lowering the barrier of entry" goal.
(There's similar question about discord "RFC")

So the first point I would like to raise is:
such painful, community-wide decisions **can not** be made in secret.
One way or another, it's going to affect every single LLVM developer,
be it one working on the upstream LLVM, or some downstream fork,
or those just wishing to keep up with the project.
**There should be transparency and accountability.**

The second question I would like to raise is:
the blog post claims transparent, first-class email support,
but the mailing list mode can not actually be toggled on.
There is just no such checkbox, unlike some other discourse forum.
For me personally, that is a deal-breaker, and unless I'm able to
keep up to date with the discussions in the lists format,
I'm simply going to stop following discussions, period.

While, I, personally, have not had much hands-on experience with
LLVM's discourse, mainly it's email side, I hear the situation
is not what the blogpost claims it to be, and there are other things
that aren't "just work", and that was known months ago, e.g.:
https://llvm.discourse.group/t/discourse-as-mailing-list-replacement-some-questions/3713/4

Given that the hard switch point of Feb 1'st has already been set,
and is less than a week away, i'd like to hear some clarification
as to what is going on, and strongly recommend doing either of the following:
* STOP migration(s) due to "false start", the end status already being decided
  before the process even begun, and using the process just as a means
  to legalize the decision made beforehand.
* postponing the switch by a month (until March 1'st), or however long needed,
  effectively immediately, in order to make the migration actually possible
  by working out the issues that have come up during the migration.

While what is written above is my personal view on things,
I do **not** believe the said view is unique to me.

What are the foundation's thoughts on this?

Roman