GCC is already basically non-existent in academic research now, although the inner essentials of the compiler are still pretty damn good and is the benchmark for open source compilers, the stuff around the outside is suffering.
https://lwn.net/Articles/582697/
> GCC's developers have actively resisted allowing it to be modularized in a way that would allow GCC's internal representation of a program to be read and used by proprietary compilation tools or optimizers.
Learning about this changed the way I looked at all GNU software.
> Basic things like onboarding and spectating on other people's code being reviewed is pretty hard to do from a mailing list.
Participation is even harder. I made some mistakes when I tried to reply to people on the GPG mailing list because I didn't really understand how mailing lists worked. Thankfully a person made a bug report on the issue tracker.
I still don't fully understand how they work. Many times I thought twice before getting involved in projects because I don't want to risk accidentally emailing people directly instead of the list thread again.
This hasn't been true for at least 10, maybe 15 years.
Mailing list development is very traditional; it's what git was initially designed around, with `format-patch` and `am` commands. People moving to Github and PRs is a generational shift thing, like using TikTok.
Though I know someone who was fired from being GNU libtool maintainer by Stallman because he developed on a Mac.
It means that you had not yet understood the principle behind free software. I'm not defending Stallman's choice, but it is coherent with the philosophy that gave us FSF and GNU.
and this is exactly the place where LLVM shines.