Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

FreeBSD Renames “Master Boot Record” to “Main Boot Record”

lists.freebsd.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 80 posts

Re: FreeBSD Renames “Master Boot Record” to “Main Boot Record”

#51

Post by stephenr »

torstenvl wrote: post #37
marcinzm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You miss the point. This isn't about offensive language. This is about language that conveys exclusion of marginalized groups. To view this as a case of people being offended does a disservice to the overall social issues these groups deal with.

You seem to be saying that master boot record "conveys exclusion of marginalized groups" but gimp (an offensive term for someone who is physically disabled) does not. I don't initially come to the same conclusion as you on this. Would you be willing to talk me through your thought process?

That usage of the term gimp is American slang.

The terms master and slave are dictionary terms, and their usage is generally a similar meaning to the historical acts at the root of the issue.

Re: FreeBSD Renames “Master Boot Record” to “Main Boot Record”

#52

Post by blastonico »

rvz wrote: post #24

How far do you want to take this? Device Drivers? Documentation? Books? Computer Science Literature?, Research Papers? I am still waiting for someone to tell Mr Linus Torvalds or Mr Greg Kroah-Hartman to make the logical case to rename all 'offensive' words and terminology in the Linux Kernel. The same also goes for OpenBSD, if anyone else has the courage to do so in their mailing lists. Even after we create breaking…

What about the "mastering" (audio), master degree programs, martial arts masters, JEDI masters. Jedi Main Yoda?

Re: FreeBSD Renames “Master Boot Record” to “Main Boot Record”

#53

Post by geofft »

maallooc wrote: post #48
geofft wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No - the CoC says nothing about being welcoming or respectful of other opinions , just of people .

"When we disagree, try to understand why. Disagreements, both social and technical, happen all the time and FreeBSD is no exception. It is important that we resolve disagreements and differing views constructively. [...] Being unable to understand why someone holds a viewpoint doesn't mean that they're wrong." Yeah, I'm sure they tell their people to be respectful of others' opinions. "Remember that we're different.…

No, that does not say to be respectful of other's opinions. It says to resolve disagreements constructively. "When will this madness end" is not an opinion that can in any way be resolved constructively - so it merits no respect.

Here's an obvious example of why your reinterpretation doesn't match the CoC: once a disagreement is resolved and you pick some answer, should you still respect the opinion "I don't like that decision"? If it comes with some new argument as to why the decision was wrong, yes, but if it's just "I still hold my original opinion," there's nothing to be gained by respecting the original opinion. As the CoC says, "It is important that we resolve disagreements."

(I guess the question is, what does it mean to respect an opinion, exactly? Can you dismiss an opinion from further consideration while still respecting it?)

Or another example: my opinion is that the GPL is a better license than the BSD one, but if I go to FreeBSD and tell them that, I am under no impression that they're bound to respect my opinion. I imagine that they will respect me as a person and my background that's led me to that conclusion - and they'll tell me that I should contribute to a different project that is under the GPL. Most FreeBSD users and contributors I know respect Linux and the people who contribute to it. They just also see a value in having their own project that has a different set of opinions.

Re: FreeBSD Renames “Master Boot Record” to “Main Boot Record”

#54

Post by CharlesW »

maallooc wrote: post #16

As a christian with a knee injury, I'm deeply offended by their devil logo and gimp program name. As this seems to be a clear violation of their code of conduct, I will officially raise this issue to their code of conduct committee. Let's see how they respond.

As a former Christian (you should capitalize that) who was raised in religious schools, pictures of the devil and the word "demon" aren't offensive.

"Devils are one of the most common mascots throughout American sports. This can likely be attributed to Christian beliefs being the most common of religions in the U.S."[1]

If anyone should be offended it's the Church of Satan, but they don't mind.

As for "gimp", you're right. Use Glipse. https://glimpse-editor.github.io/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_symbolism_in_U.S._sp...

Re: FreeBSD Renames “Master Boot Record” to “Main Boot Record”

#55

Post by geofft »

selykg wrote: post #50
cczizou wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed.

Given the downvotes I’m getting I think this industry is a lot more racist than I thought.

The good news is that the downvotes aren't necessarily representative of the industry, in the sense of people who actually get things done. You'll notice that this change (see also the bit about being sponsored by Mellanox), the recent OpenZFS change, etc. were all made by core contributors to the projects. (It's also why the Contributor Covenant was fairly rapidly adopted by the actual contributors to so many projects, despite so many people being angry about it.)

But yes, the open source fandom is distressingly racist.

Re: FreeBSD Renames “Master Boot Record” to “Main Boot Record”

#56

Post by blastonico »

KryDos wrote: post #49

So as far as I understand Hans (the author) is FreeBSD maintainer and he made the change in the source code. Community isn't happy about it (based on the email thread). Is there any person who can actually revert the change ignoring Hans? How does it work in FreeBSD? I'm quite unhappy with such changes. There are terms I used to and I never thought about those terms in any way bad meaning. Are people who rename Maste…

Europeans LOVE to dictate what other people must do, pointing fingers and change everything to make them feel better about themselves.

I'm from Brazil, ex-colony of Portugal, and studied that in History for almost a decade. It's funny when I read their newspaper explaining what brazilians must do with our forests. They don't lose that metropolitan mind.

Re: FreeBSD Renames “Master Boot Record” to “Main Boot Record”

#57

Post by maallooc »

geofft wrote: post #53
maallooc wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"When we disagree, try to understand why. Disagreements, both social and technical, happen all the time and FreeBSD is no exception. It is important that we resolve disagreements and differing views constructively. [...] Being unable to understand why someone holds a viewpoint doesn't mean that they're wrong." Yeah, I'm sure they tell their people to be respectful of others' opinions. "Remember that we're different.…

No, that does not say to be respectful of other's opinions. It says to resolve disagreements constructively. "When will this madness end" is not an opinion that can in any way be resolved constructively - so it merits no respect. Here's an obvious example of why your reinterpretation doesn't match the CoC: once a disagreement is resolved and you pick some answer, should you still respect the opinion "I don't like tha…

Who gave you the authority to judge whether a speech is an opinion? "When will this madness end?" is an opinion, that this is a madness. Simple as that.

Also, if you go to freebsd and tout about GPL, they will still respect your opinion. They won't agree with it, but that doesn't mean respect.

Re: FreeBSD Renames “Master Boot Record” to “Main Boot Record”

#58

Post by selykg »

geofft wrote: post #55
selykg wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the downvotes I’m getting I think this industry is a lot more racist than I thought.

The good news is that the downvotes aren't necessarily representative of the industry , in the sense of people who actually get things done. You'll notice that this change (see also the bit about being sponsored by Mellanox), the recent OpenZFS change, etc. were all made by core contributors to the projects. (It's also why the Contributor Covenant was fairly rapidly adopted by the actual contributors to so many proje…

The response to this is actually making me not want to even be a member of this site anymore. Amazing. What a sad group of people.

Re: FreeBSD Renames “Master Boot Record” to “Main Boot Record”

#59

Post by jb0x168 »

maallooc wrote: post #44
geofft wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, sorry, you're right - when a slave wants to go talk to someone, he can do so at any time as long as the master isn't currently talking to someone. And the slave gets no orders from the master, both the master and the slave get orders from someone else. And yes, the master makes no decisions on his own, the master simply sees which of the slaves has indicated that he wishes to be passed control, and then the maste…

I'm glad you got it. Because the behavior is similar to slavery in humanity, it's named that. You're not saying we should eliminate slavery-like behavior in computing, right?

Ask that same question again after we have self-aware machines/software.

Inherent in the negative concept of slavery is the removal or limitation of self-determination. If the components don't have free will, this isn't an imposition.

However, in the larger context, there are very much thinking, feeling entities that are negatively impacted by the use of this terminology.

In contrast, it costs next to nothing to update the terminology to use similar terms that don't cause psychological harm to a significant portion of the populace.

Re: FreeBSD Renames “Master Boot Record” to “Main Boot Record”

#60

Post by jb0x168 »

geofft wrote: post #55
selykg wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the downvotes I’m getting I think this industry is a lot more racist than I thought.

The good news is that the downvotes aren't necessarily representative of the industry , in the sense of people who actually get things done. You'll notice that this change (see also the bit about being sponsored by Mellanox), the recent OpenZFS change, etc. were all made by core contributors to the projects. (It's also why the Contributor Covenant was fairly rapidly adopted by the actual contributors to so many proje…

I don't think it's exactly racism in many of these cases, so much as a lack of empathy. If you're not personally affected by these terms, and you're not able to empathize with those that are, I can see why, without being overtly racist against any particular group of people, you could be against these changes.

Our inability to empathize, or "put ourselves in someone else's shoes" is at the root of so many of our problems...

Post reply on HN