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ZFS Removes References to Slavery

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Re: ZFS Removes References to Slavery

#101

Post by oliwarner »

sandstrom wrote: post #97

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 recor…

Sure... But why not remove imagery of slavery from tech syntax?

We have plenty of other organisational terms to denote a higher rank. What's wrong with those? They might even be more accurate. I don't suppose DBAs get in a ship to pillage and loot foreign lands for their database redundancy.

I see too many people arguing semantics or historical bias, or whataboutisms but barely anybody giving positive arguments to preserve the master-slave terms in tech. If "all races have had slavers" is the best you've got, perhaps it's time for change.

Re: ZFS Removes References to Slavery

#102

Post by ThrowawayBandit »

ashtonkem wrote: post #96
mytailorisrich wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That's not what I did either in form and in substance.

There is a worrying trend of trying to force changes of vocabulary (not only this one) and to purge history for ideological purposes and we're also seeing people suffering for not embracing that trend or, worse, criticising it (as I wrote this is getting close to "public denunciations").

These are dynamics very similar, albeit not as extreme, to what happened during the Cultural Revolution and other campaigns in the USSR/Eastern Europe during the 20th century.

Fighting racism is a good cause, of course. But arguably so what fighting against feodalism and the exploitation of the working class, and see what happened...

I did not call anyone a "Red Guard", I wrote that the current situation was "getting there", and I think it could, indeed.

If you guys want to censor that comment as well, go ahead, but then please acknowledge where this is going.

Re: ZFS Removes References to Slavery

#103

Post by MauranKilom »

geofft wrote: post #86
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.

That's the funny thing - in almost all contexts I've seen the "master/slave" terminology, it's not actually technically clear. In some contexts (e.g. Jenkins), a "master" tells the "slave" what to do and the "slave" does it. This at least is plausibly connected to the real-world meanings of the term, although given that the "slave" can start and stop work at any time and the "master" needs to accommodate that, the an…

> [Jenkins] "Coordinator/worker" works well here.

Agreed, although my mind immediately went to "manager" and how that is one of the most useless names. See e.g. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1866794. Need to be careful with this type of naming.

> [MySQL] "Primary/replica" works well here.

Agreed.

> [ZFS] Terms that would make sense include things like "bond device/bonded member" (the members being bonded to each other), "logical volume/physical volume", etc. In this pull request they seem to use "dependency."

These names more than double number of syllables/characters, which will severely hamper adoption. I find "dependency" to be a bad descriptor for individual components fully making up a whole, but I expect that the ZFS people deliberated over that name and that my extremely limited familiarity with the topic(s) is the reason why I find "dependency" weird.

> [disk drives] "Primary/secondary" works well here.

Agreed.

> [pseudoterminals] I don't know of a standard term here, but I'd sort of suggest "monitor" and "application" (or perhaps "monitor" and "session" if you want to keep the initials).

I would strongly discourage overloading the meaning of "monitor" in the context of terminals. Otherwise, you all but guarantee confusion.

Re: ZFS Removes References to Slavery

#104

Post by rodgerd »

geofft wrote: post #86
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.

That's the funny thing - in almost all contexts I've seen the "master/slave" terminology, it's not actually technically clear. In some contexts (e.g. Jenkins), a "master" tells the "slave" what to do and the "slave" does it. This at least is plausibly connected to the real-world meanings of the term, although given that the "slave" can start and stop work at any time and the "master" needs to accommodate that, the an…

Thank you for the most substantive post in the thread.

Re: ZFS Removes References to Slavery

#105

Post by [deleted] »

toxik wrote: post #29
ThrowawayBandit wrote: post #2

I 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.

More importantly, these recent events are being likened to the Chinese cultural revolution _by Chinese people who lived through it._ That should give you enough of a signal to understand that this is not necessarily benign and in anybody’s best interest. I think the reason we use master and slave is simply that the words are short, equal length in both letters and syllables, and get the message across — cf leader/fol…

[deleted]

Re: ZFS Removes References to Slavery

#106

Post by ashtonkem »

speedgoose wrote: post #19

I think this is a good thing. I'm not a fan of removing the master name, because master has more meanings than in the slavery context and its other meanings fit well the metaphor of master in IT. But they have not removed the master term. Only the slave term, which can go away. I will not miss it, it always felt weird to use this metaphor.

I find the name “main” or “develop” to be much more clear branch names than “master”.

Re: ZFS Removes References to Slavery

#107

Post by qeternity »

vijaybritto wrote: post #70
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…

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 b…

> > 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?

> Yes absolutely

Ehh what?

Re: ZFS Removes References to Slavery

#108

Post by manuelaljibes »

oliwarner wrote: post #101
sandstrom wrote: post #97

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 recor…

Sure... But why not remove imagery of slavery from tech syntax? We have plenty of other organisational terms to denote a higher rank. What's wrong with those? They might even be more accurate. I don't suppose DBAs get in a ship to pillage and loot foreign lands for their database redundancy. I see too many people arguing semantics or historical bias, or whataboutisms but barely anybody giving positive arguments to pr…

There's no technical reason to make this change, it's an annoying change with literally zero positive impact on the world, this won't abolish slavery nor will it help anyone, it may help the promoters of this stupidity to feel better about themselves, like "look at us! we are aligned with the PC agenda! We're sooo progressive and docile!"

Re: ZFS Removes References to Slavery

#109

Post by qeternity »

dependenttypes wrote: post #100
qeternity wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wasn't saying they were worse. I was replying to a concern that we will end up with multiple names that mean the same thing. I mean, this is modern technology...it seems like only the hardware guys can manage consistent naming, and even that is slipping. On the software side? I can only think of rare things which don't have a half dozen synonyms.

Re: ZFS Removes References to Slavery

#110

Post by rambojazz »

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.

wtf? You people created a problem that didn't exist before, and now you're attacking people for not caring about a non-problem? The origin of the work "master" is not "oppression" and "slavery", it's simply "control" or "authority". If you don't understand this, and if you think that others should care because you are offended by a non-existent problem that you have created, then software is absolutely not the career for you. What comes next after "master"? Binary? Admin? Terminal? Kill? Server? Abort?
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