Remove blacklist terminology · Issue #6475 · osquery/osquery

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 09, 2020, 3:43 AM UTC

jgwil2 wrote: post #21

RhysU wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if we're whitelisting or blacklisting people for the privilege to attend an organized crime conference? Which is good? Which is bad? Note that in this unsavory example there is zero ambiguity! The whitelisted will hang with other mobsters, clearly, plotting evil and mayhem all the while. The terms have bupkis to do with good and bad.

Okay, I guess if you're writing malware then you can feel free to carry on with whatever terminology you like. For the rest of us it is understood that a blacklist is untrusted and a whitelist is trusted, so why don't we just say that explicitly and do away with a culturally dependent metaphor that could offend or confuse?

Post by RhysU » Tue, Jun 09, 2020, 4:10 AM UTC

jgwil2 wrote: post #21

RhysU wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if we're whitelisting or blacklisting people for the privilege to attend an organized crime conference? Which is good? Which is bad? Note that in this unsavory example there is zero ambiguity! The whitelisted will hang with other mobsters, clearly, plotting evil and mayhem all the while. The terms have bupkis to do with good and bad.

Okay, I guess if you're writing malware then you can feel free to carry on with whatever terminology you like. For the rest of us it is understood that a blacklist is untrusted and a whitelist is trusted, so why don't we just say that explicitly and do away with a culturally dependent metaphor that could offend or confuse?

Post by atonse » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 7:34 PM UTC

jgwil2 wrote: post #20

atonse wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you – allow/deny is easier to understand anyway for global non-native speaker (which all open source projects are). There are many practical reasons to do this, I just wasn't clear on the race-related reasoning for blacklist/whitelist, as these words don't have those etymologies. The color black is associated with many non-racial things that we do deem negative, things like death with black clothes at fu…

I agree that'd be great, but between changing the world's use of black and white and changing our use of blacklist and whitelist as pertains to software, one is in our power and the other isn't. Who knows, maybe someone will even feel more welcomed in our profession as a result.

Post by ThA0x2 » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 4:26 PM UTC

jgwil2 wrote: post #14

noble_pleb wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, this is just going to open up a pandora's box. What about black box testing, is that racist too? And english terms like blacksmith and black-belt? There are terms like "blue-collar vs white-collar" too which (according to some) deems the physical labor class as inferior to the "white" intellectual class. And there are general english phrases too like "things aren't always black and white, there is a lot of g…

Those terms don't explicitly attach a moral value to colors in the way that the blacklist/whitelist terminology does.