If you're interested in working on the project though, more hands are always welcome; I'd suggest contacting our team lead, Peter Buhr, his email is pabuhr AT the university domain Cforall is hosted on.
When I started on the project ~3 years ago, it took me about 2 weeks to work around the (then current) set of compiler bugs to make a 100-line benchmark program -- naturally a public release at that point would not have been fruitful. Today our compiler generally works, and we're looking forward to making a public release once we get a couple more features stabilized.
Basically, day 1 transparency either requires a budget or misplaced priorities.
> I'm always skeptical of the claims that things can't be done transparently because it's not open to input yet. Those things are orthogonal.
You don't have to explain anything. You don't have to set up a website (case here already had a website, code was just hidden). I'm not sure where these requirements come from, but it's not true, and I'd argue you do more harm giving the impression of secret development than you do not accepting input at an early stage. We all understand the latter, but many of us are wary of the former when someone says their committed to openness and does the opposite.