Why haven't the prehistoric computer people choose something else. I like 'master' and 'puppet'. Totally non-offensive and very close to the metal
ZFS Removes References to Slavery
61–70 of 154 posts
Re: ZFS Removes References to Slavery
#62I invite people to read about the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the so-called Red Guards. We are getting there. Be very careful what you say and what exact terms you use.
Here's what I understand about the Cultural Revolution and the Red Guards:
- The Cultural Revolution was organized by Chairman Mao, the leader of a single-party state. The Red Guards were personally supported by him. Both were official government policy and could not be opposed.
- The goal was to attack people in power who were perceived as reactionary / "revisionist" and remove them from power, by violence if necessary.
- The Cultural Revolution had, as a goal, the destruction of remnants of pre-communist history. The Red Guards attacked historical artifacts and cultural sites so that there was no memory of them.
- Hundreds of thousands if not millions of people were killed.
Here's my understanding of this pull request:
- It was not ordered by any government. The current leader and current ruling party of the government under which the people involved in this pull request live are not aware of it or even the larger movement of similar pull requests / discussions, and if they were made aware of it, they'd almost certainly object.
- It was done by the ZFS contributors themselves, not by outsiders. Nobody tried to remove existing people in power from that power, certainly not violently.
- No attempt is made to erase history. History is right there in "git log." The pull request accurately points out that a change is being made, what the change is, and why. Older versions of ZFS remain published with the old terminology.
- Nobody is dying. Nobody involved has a weapon more dangerous than "git reset --hard," and they'll only hurt themselves with that one anyway.
I agree with you that we should be wary of government-imposed revolutionary fervor that seeks to destroy political opposition. I think, however, that if people involved a project have made up their minds freely about some topic and want to make some change, the way we should to guard against the dangers of things like the Cultural Revolution would be to encourage people to take actions they've decided upon in the places where they already have power, to encourage them to think for themselves, and to not try to portray folks with some very meager but nonzero power (like village mayors or ZFS maintainers) as dangerous threats to all that is good in the world who must be stopped by outsiders.
Re: ZFS Removes References to Slavery
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your boycott won't change anything. Is the only avenue of political change that you can see through the lens of individual consumption? I genuinely don't see boycotts as powerful as others, so maybe I'm missing something here. However, shouldn't all avenues be taken if you're attempting to change something?
>maybe I'm missing something here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott#Notable_boycotts You're right that boycotts without leverage experience little success, but wrong if you think they are never successful.
They only work if there is a power differential in-line with a block of consumers. I don't see ZFS developers as being a large enough block to affect anything, so their suggestion largely seems to be saying, "just do nothing instead."
Re: ZFS Removes References to Slavery
#64Nothing to see here except devs covering their asses from accusations. As a PoC, I recognize that actions like this do nothing to change the system and they are really just diversions from actually putting in effort to make a real impact.
What's the definition for PoC? I want to know if I'm included.
Re: ZFS Removes References to Slavery
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
What part of it specifically?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak
Newspeak removes terms from language so that certain ideas cannot be expressed.
This pull request does concern language, yes. But it retains the use of the term "slave" in existing APIs, while updating a script that is named "slaves" to use the term "deps," a term that is already used elsewhere in the API. At the end of the pull request, both terms remain meaningful. Furthermore, no attempt is made to hide previous use of the term - or to prevent using the term "slave" to refer to human slavery.
So I'm not sure I see the comparison.
Re: ZFS Removes References to Slavery
#66I knew there would be these petty comments in here. For people who in general work in such an intellectual and ephemeral pursuit there is so much pathetic clinging to meaningless terms. The computer does not care. It's only the human beings in the community that do.
And it's our choice whether to be neutral and inclusive or miserly trolls clinging to meaningless out of date terms coined in times when these weren't considerations. Rise above it. Embrace other people's experiences that maybe you have not had and have no idea about. Just appreciate that it may have happened to someone and not you and you do not have to reject them by posting a petty comment. Call it Big Cantaloupe / Little Cantaloupe. It doesn't matter. At least then nobody would be reminded of a murdered ancestor or the nature of the person who named it when all they wanted to do was use a stupid file system.
Don't be a dick. Be nice. x
Re: ZFS Removes References to Slavery
#67I will try to avoid controversy here and word this carefully: I can't help but think that something is wrong in the minds of people who take offense at something like this. If in the context of programming and system administration, the term master/slave is 'offensive' and makes you think of racism, and one group of people being oppressed by another, your mind seems to make some completely different connections from…
It's not 'activism', not even 'slacktivism', it's all about control and bullying, even over the most minute of 'spotting' such things.
Re: ZFS Removes References to Slavery
#68I might make a pull request to remove all the references of kill (75 atm) https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/search?q=kill&unscoped_q=kill
The horrible effects of human killing continue to impact society. The casual use of the term "kill" in computer software is an unnecessary reference to a painful human experience.
Re: ZFS Removes References to Slavery
#69Nothing to see here except devs covering their asses from accusations. As a PoC, I recognize that actions like this do nothing to change the system and they are really just diversions from actually putting in effort to make a real impact.
(non-rhetorically) I wonder if actions like this are more harmful or beneficial. On one hand, they raise awareness, but on the other, they're just token gestures, and they might cause debate that'd be better spent on something for meaningful.
Re: ZFS Removes References to Slavery
#70I will try to avoid controversy here and word this carefully: I can't help but think that something is wrong in the minds of people who take offense at something like this. If in the context of programming and system administration, the term master/slave is 'offensive' and makes you think of racism, and one group of people being oppressed by another, your mind seems to make some completely different connections from…
This is such a terrible take!
> So I guess HR departments have to check naming conventions in programs now for misogyny / politically non-correct / possibly racist terminology before release?
Of course. Why is that a question?
>If in a book a white man were enslaved by some Asian tribe, how would master/slave terminology be non-correct in describing the participants?
Edit:
xxxYes absolutelyxxx
The terminology would be correct. But that's fiction. This is real life with real consequences. The reason it's being removed here is because it's ignorant and disrespectful.