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ZFS Removes References to Slavery

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Re: ZFS Removes References to Slavery

#91

Post by artistsvoid »

there_the_and wrote: post #83
artistsvoid wrote: post #60

I 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…

Obviously, all of you bitching and moaning about your precious master / slave terminology are the most triggered. If you can't handle a name change, then software is absolutely not the career for you.

Look, I think if you propose a change to a long-standing naming convention it's you who should make the case, and I find the case to be weak. I don't think calling it 'bitching and moaning' is warranted. And if all code ends up not using that terminology I will adapt and move on, not sure what else you think I would be doing.

Re: ZFS Removes References to Slavery

#92

Post by ashtonkem »

Ghjklov wrote: post #85
dehrmann wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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.

It's the kind of token gesture that actually just makes people more skeptical or angry at PoC who most of the time had nothing to do with the gesture.

I doubt that’s specific to these kinds of efforts; it seems that any advance for PoC in America draws a significant backlash, whether or not the advance was substantive or symbolic.

Re: ZFS Removes References to Slavery

#93

Post by geofft »

pacala wrote: post #73
geofft wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 u…

The title right now: 'ZFS Removes References to Slavery'. Probably 95% of the commenters have not read TFA in sufficient detail to argue minutiae details. They see 'language changed in support of the dominant political current' and link it to Newspeak because that's the only frame of reference most people are aware of. It's not like it's an isolated incident, there is plenty of language redefinition, history rewritin…

> Probably 95% of the commenters have not read TFA in sufficient detail to argue minutiae details. They see 'language changed in support of the dominant political current' and link it to Newspeak

That might be the first Orwellian thing in this thread - people see a thing they've been told is bad and done by bad people and they need to get their Two Minutes Hate out, and they don't have the intellectual curiosity to spend those two minutes figuring out what's actually happening. (Actually, maybe there's a bit of Brave New World in there too.)

> there is plenty of language redefinition, history rewriting and statues toppling as we speak.

Give me specific examples, and we can talk about whether this is 1984 or not.

(I'm aware of some statues being toppled over the last couple of weeks that were originally put in place by people who wanted to rewrite history - and the act of toppling those statues has caused much more public discussion about the subjects of their statues and their true history than the statues themselves ever did. That hardly seems like 1984 to me. I'm not sure what you mean by language redefinition and history rewriting, otherwise.)

Re: ZFS Removes References to Slavery

#94

Post by geofft »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #81
geofft wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 u…

The comparison is apt IMO, as per Wikipedia pages linked to: " To meet the ideological requirements of English Socialism (Ingsoc) in Oceania, the ruling Party created Newspeak,[1] a controlled language of simplified grammar and restricted vocabulary, meant to limit the freedom of thought—personal identity, self-expression, free will—that threatens the ideology of the régime of Big Brother and the Party, who have crim…

In what way does this pull request "limit the freedom of thought—personal identity, self-expression, free will"?

Re: ZFS Removes References to Slavery

#95

Post by um_ya »

pacala wrote: post #73
geofft wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 u…

The title right now: 'ZFS Removes References to Slavery'. Probably 95% of the commenters have not read TFA in sufficient detail to argue minutiae details. They see 'language changed in support of the dominant political current' and link it to Newspeak because that's the only frame of reference most people are aware of. It's not like it's an isolated incident, there is plenty of language redefinition, history rewritin…

Not to mention the compelled speech in Canada, in regards to gender pronouns.

Re: ZFS Removes References to Slavery

#96

Post by ashtonkem »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #87
tangue wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's right. No fucking engineer is being thrown inside a camp starving to death so yes the comparison is hyperbolic.

Flagging the guy's comments to make then disappear would tend to support the comparison he made, though.

I disagree; I see this as HN responding poorly to the form of the argument, not the substance.

If I were to go around and make comparisons between right wing policies and nazism, I would also expect a rapid downvote into oblivion. Would that downvote prove my point, or would it just show that HN disapproves of my invocation of Godwin?

Re: ZFS Removes References to Slavery

#97

Post by sandstrom »

I think this word censorship is meaningless and dangerous. It sets a bad precedent, anyone can get offended by anything. That doesn’t justify censorship.

It's not even a white/black thing. White people has had white slaves (millions), black people has had black slaves (also millions).

The Atlantic slave trade is just example of slavery. It has existed in many civilizations:

“Evidence of slavery predates written records, and has existed in many cultures. [...] the practice of slavery [...] proliferated after the invention of agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution, about 11,000 years ago.

Slavery was known in civilizations as old as Sumer, as well as in almost every other ancient civilization, including ancient Egypt, ancient China, the Akkadian Empire, Assyria, Babylonia, ancient Iran, ancient Greece, ancient India, the Roman Empire, the Arab Islamic Caliphate and Sultanate, Nubia and the pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery

Re: ZFS Removes References to Slavery

#98

Post by dependenttypes »

fabatka wrote: post #84
dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't be a dick. Be nice. x The irony here is that the discourse of people from your camp is usually non-inclusive.

I think that maybe this falls under the paradox of tolerance ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance )

I think that you are right. It seems that a tolerant society attracts intolerant (both far left and far right) elements that want to restrict the freedom of speech. It is similar to the reason that GPL is prefered by some - by restricting some freedoms you defend the others. Similarly I think that it would make sense to restrict the freedom of speech of these that want to eliminate it.

Re: ZFS Removes References to Slavery

#99

Post by takeda »

yread wrote: post #61

Why haven't the prehistoric computer people choose something else. I like 'master' and 'puppet'. Totally non-offensive and very close to the metal

I think a better is master-follower if they really must.

But this is silly, I totally understand for PostgreSQL change from master-slave to master-standby. Standby is actually much better word to describe node's function.

The change for the sake of word being offensive is just plain stupid. The use of it did not really encourage slavery based on race. So it feels less about offending then being reminded about horrible American's history.

If they want to go all PC, what about use of word "kill"[1]?

[1] https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/search?q=kill&unscoped_q=kill

Re: ZFS Removes References to Slavery

#100

Post by dependenttypes »

qeternity wrote: post #45
akerro wrote: post #22

Can these project changing words at least agree on a single word to use? We're going to have 10s of different words representing the same thing that for decades of evolving technology was known as slave. It will make it confusing and difficult to move between technologies.

We already do to some degree: follower, replica, secondary, etc

All of these seem quite a bit worse than slave to be honest. Why not use server/client instead?

Edit: another post in this thread suggested master and puppet, I think that this is a cute yet clear variant.

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