Literally who cares? It's again the same thing: some kind of weird elitism about what qualifies as real research and who qualifies it. It's so simple in my mind: people did good work and they're willing to share it with the world without much in return (just a venue and 30 minutes to talk about it). Cool great I'm all for it no matter whomever/wherever/whatever. There is exactly zero scarcity here anymore that necessitates ranking anything at all.
I don't care where papers are published (in fact I mostly agree with you, I think that the idea that research needs to be novel to everyone currently in the field is harmful and leads to gate-keeping, self-censorship and unpublished folklore). I am merely pointing out that appealing to the authority of PLDI as the premier PL research conference to qualify the paper as research does not work since PLDI did not publish it.
