The people enforcing this policy are applying a blanket policy to a situation which (IMO) makes no sense. I forward every "disgruntled" email on to the people in question. Since they are the defenders of "Apple's public image", it seems fairly possible that it may eventually sway them. The more public the griping, the better.
So yes, 'me too' emails are potentially useful.
-Chris
I’m pretty disappointed that the Clang and Scalar Evolution talks are not available. I couldn’t make the dev meeting this year; however, I figured the videos and slides would still be available. Apple is sending the wrong message; don’t they want to promote the idea that LLVM is an open project and not just Apple owned? It’s silly to reinforce the fear around LLVM that Apple will close further development.
The blanket policy enforcement is ridiculous in this case.
Keir
A definite "me too" here. I went to the exception handling BoF instead of the OpenCL talk, expecting it to be online after.
-- Joe Ranieri
I would be especially interested in the Scalar Evolution, and Register
Allocation talks (and I wouldn't mind seeing the other Apple talks
either, for example OpenCL is not something of immediate interest to
me, but perhaps something in the talk could prove interesting/useful).
I think having the talks available is a great way to show Apple's
accomplishments and involvement in LLVM.
I don't know what the reason is behind Apple's policy, there's certainly
nothing to be ashamed about regarding these talks,
and they don't discuss the secret internal workings of an Apple product:
the code for everything that is discussed is publicly available AFAIK.
Either way the people who attended the meeting were able to see and hear
everything, not making the talks available to others only results in
disappointment.
Maybe Apple's marketing dept. could approve each video/slide on a case
by case basis?
Best regards,
--Edwin
The slides and video would be very nice even for those who did make it
to the meeting. As there were multiple sessions going on at a time
it's a given that we missed useful sessions, And beyond that I
personally didn't take many notes with the assumption that the slides
were going to be made available at the very least.
Nicholas "Indy" Ray
The people enforcing this policy are applying a blanket policy to a
situation which (IMO) makes no sense. I forward every "disgruntled"
email on to the people in question. Since they are the defenders of
"Apple's public image", it seems fairly possible that it may
eventually sway them. The more public the griping, the better.So yes, 'me too' emails are potentially useful.
Well, if Chris says so, then "me too!"
I'm a student at MIT and I would've loved to go see those talks, but I
was too busy to get back to the left coast.
When I talk to my friends about what I worked on over the summer, I
talk about LLVM, and now I have to mention this little addendum that
working with LLVM can be troublesome because of Apple's secrecy. This
is a case in point.
ditto-ly,
Reid
Hello LLVM Developers,
Here's a definite "me too" letter also. My programming partner and I were planning on coming together in the same car for a 3 day drive there and another 3 day drive back... except that his wife gave birth about 2 or 3 weeks before the conference and he had to stay with her. SInce I couldn't afford the gas for the trip myself that meant I couldn't come either.
I know that several flavors of BSD have made Clang their default compiler and at least one Linux distro in the works is planning on doing likewise. Clang is one of the hottest cross-platform projects that open-source has to offer in the sense that it offers a plausible alternative to the GCC toolchain. The possibility of a cross-compiling to a generic bitcode makes it even more valuable since it greatly simplifies the GCC problem of having to have a separate version of GCC or even LLVM-GCC for each platform being compiled for.
Maybe it would be more practical in future conferences for the Apple engineers to pass crib notes to the non-Apple people involved with the projects and just have non-Apple speakers from now on. This should get around the rule. I just hope we don't have to sign non-disclosure agreements upon arrival like some developers' conferences I've been to.
Perhaps next year I can come,
--Sam Crow
Chris,
I hope you can pass my message along to the people at Apple who made this decision.
I too am disappointed that not all talk slides are posted. To me it speaks poorly of the whole meeting since there were parallel sessions and not everyone could attend in person all the sessions they wanted to. The slides are, I thought, meant to be like the “proceedings” and If I recall some of the Apple slides are present from previous years but not this year.
Vinod
I've never heard of anyone forbidding their workers to distribute
videos of their non-secret-revealing talks. Most tech companies want
to broadcast far and wide the talent of their people, and having them
give public talks and publicly distribute videos of same seems like a
good way to do that.
I'd also like to register my disappointment that the slides and videos
aren't available.
When I agreed to be a speaker, I signed off on having my
talk made publicly available. There does seem to be a
double-standard here and that's concerning.
There are few things about this whole situation that aren't clear to me:
1. With what organization were these speaker agreements made?
2. Did the speakers from Apple sign the same agreements?
3. If the agreements were made with an organization other than Apple, on
what basis are the materials being witheld?
3a. That is, do the Dev Meeting organizers, or whichever organization it
was that issued the agreements, already have legal permission to release
them?
3b. What would be the consequences of releasing the materials without
Apple's approval?
4. If the agreements were made with Apple, why?
4a. Is there a need for the community to establish an independent legal
entity (similar to the FSF or the Apache Software Foundation) to govern
LLVM development and organize developer meetings?
-Ken
Ken Dyck wrote:
I'd also like to register my disappointment that the slides and videos
aren't available.
I would have liked to have seen Nate Begeman's talk on OpenCL. It seems
odd to me that Nate is able to distribute his code openly, via public
commits to the LLVM subversion repository, but isn't allowed to explain
his work in public.
Ciao,
Duncan.
I'd also like to register my disappointment that the slides and videos
aren't available.When I agreed to be a speaker, I signed off on having my
talk made publicly available. There does seem to be a
double-standard here and that's concerning.There are few things about this whole situation that aren't clear to me:
1. With what organization were these speaker agreements made?
With the developer meeting organizers.
2. Did the speakers from Apple sign the same agreements?
No, it turns out that they generally didn't because we didn't anticipate a problem. Even if they did, the speakers themselves don't have authority to release this, they generally have to check with their employers.
3. If the agreements were made with an organization other than Apple, on
what basis are the materials being witheld?
3a. That is, do the Dev Meeting organizers, or whichever organization it
was that issued the agreements, already have legal permission to release
them?
3b. What would be the consequences of releasing the materials without
Apple's approval?
As I stated previously, we found out about this extremely late into the process. There is a high probability that at least some of the slides will get released in time.
4. If the agreements were made with Apple, why?
n/a.
4a. Is there a need for the community to establish an independent legal
entity (similar to the FSF or the Apache Software Foundation) to govern
LLVM development and organize developer meetings?
I agree that a third party foundation would be useful for other reasons, but this wouldn't help anything in this case.
My read of your position here is that you're coming at this from a confused angle. From my perspective, Apple has some just about everything right w.r.t. developing LLVM in the open, contributing code, fostering development etc. The only major problem to date has been around speakers at the developer meeting, which is a pretty minor issue in the big picture, and still is an ongoing debate (so it isn't a done deal).
Getting back to "it wouldn't help anything": if the Developer Meeting were held elsewhere and if the current rule was still in place, it would be very simple: there would be no Apple speakers because they wouldn't be able to sign the form. This doesn't seem to achieve your goal of making those talks public.
-Chris
+1 for releasing both videos and slides, “ScalarEvolution and Loop Optimization” is my primary interest but surely would get around to the others as well.
So it seems. Thanks for clarifying.
-Ken