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Red Hat to remove contentious terms like master and slave from its source code

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Re: Red Hat to remove contentious terms like master and slave from its source code

#61

Post by bassman9000 »

gruez wrote: post #51
LeoPanthera wrote: post #17

I feel like I'm in the minority that thinks this is a good idea. I can easily see how some people might be made uncomfortable by the existing wording, but more importantly, I can see no downside to changing it. It will be a very small amount of work for a very small amount of time and then everything will carry on as normal. If this helps make programming more inclusive, even in a small way, then I'm all for it.

>I can see no downside to changing it. Yes there is. If you set a precedent that you're going to cave whenever someone says they are offended, you're going to attract trolls pretending to be offended so they can have a laugh at your expense[1]. The whole master/main controversy might be genuine, but it's only a matter of time before 4chan comes up with another word/phrase for whites to be guilty about, and therefore…

Plus, the cost. There's no change without a trade off.

Re: Red Hat to remove contentious terms like master and slave from its source code

#62

Post by bdcravens »

Jabbles wrote: post #58
bdcravens wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you need links, I'll dig up links to the discussions I'm talking about. That said, this level of discourse sounds like it's devolving to what I'd expect on T_D or similar.

I want you to justify or retract your statement that "There's significant push back from the BLM core". Because that's massively different from "I saw some PoC disagree with this on Twitter" and I want HN to be a place where the discourse is fact-based.

Sure, I'll edit my statement.

Re: Red Hat to remove contentious terms like master and slave from its source code

#63

Post by RegnisGnaw »

singron wrote: post #57
RegnisGnaw wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly it. It reminds me of some aspects of China during The Great Leap Forward. The grain production quotas set by Mao was completely unrealistic. However if the local leader said it, they would be branded as "anti-revolutionary" and sent off to reeducation camps. So the local leader lied and said they achieved the quota and was praised by the party. This lead to other village leader saying they exceeded the…

Misreporting regional grain production caused the central government to export "excess" grain and led to domestic famine. Replacing unnecessary uses of the word "slave" in corporate codebase probably has less dire consequences. Our problems with race are systemic and deeply rooted in many aspects of our culture. There isn't going to be a small number if things that will fix racism. The journey of a thousand miles sta…

Definitely less dire consequences. It was more of a comment on the later leaders. They wanted to appear more revolutionary (eg. pro-party) so they lied and exaggrated more and more about their production. Similar to how these companies are doing these superficial changes so they can appear to be more pro-BLM/Woke/anti-racist.

Re: Red Hat to remove contentious terms like master and slave from its source code

#64

Post by ogre_codes »

imglorp wrote: post #30
Dig1t wrote: post #5

Google is also mass refactoring internally as well, blacklist/whitelist are now blocklist/allowlist and so on. It's quite a bit of churn.

This one kind of bothers me. Dark and light are concepts from long before written history and have nothing to do with humans even. Predators and bad things hunt in the dark, evil, etc. There's really no benefit to meaningless conflations of human social problems with other things. I agree with the other comment about assuaging white guilt; it doesn't help someone get hired, talk to the police, or find housing. Those…

> I agree with the other comment about assuaging white guilt; it doesn't help someone get hired, talk to the police, or find housing.

You make it sound like this is a bunch of white people unilaterally doing something so they feel better. As if there are no black programmers asking for this change.

https://www.cnet.com/news/twitter-engineers-replace-racially...

The whole point of this effort is to make the workplace less hostile for people we work with. Black programmers are part of that.

Re: Red Hat to remove contentious terms like master and slave from its source code

#65

Post by cs02rm0 »

simion314 wrote: post #60
cs02rm0 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you do that when you have an established word an entire industry understands? Words only have the meaning we convey to them and as soon as you put more words in the mix that dilutes any clarity. We're back to the xkcd on standards.

I am not an english speaker, for example "black list" is a concept that translates worse then "blocked list" , the first requires you have some local or historical context the last one is just clear as day.

Block has multiple meanings in English. You don't need historical context, but you'll always need context.

Re: Red Hat to remove contentious terms like master and slave from its source code

#66

Post by escardin »

entropea wrote: post #19
LeoPanthera wrote: post #17

I feel like I'm in the minority that thinks this is a good idea. I can easily see how some people might be made uncomfortable by the existing wording, but more importantly, I can see no downside to changing it. It will be a very small amount of work for a very small amount of time and then everything will carry on as normal. If this helps make programming more inclusive, even in a small way, then I'm all for it.

How does it help black individuals though? Like how does it improve their lives, police brutality & prison reform, poverty, water quality?

In some sense, it doesn't. But the point of these measures is to be anti-racist. To make the environment more welcoming to people of colour. Maybe the majority of people of colour don't care, but I am sure that some do.

In my own experiences, being actively welcoming provides a level of safety that silence will not, because the status quo is that it is not safe for me to be myself, even if I might plausibly be accepted among my specific peer group.

Overall, these are small changes (what github is doing notwithstanding), and the amount of time onlookers have spent whinging about them far exceeds the time spent making the changes.

No, this won't address the most pressing systematic abuses by minorities, but it does make one of the most lucrative careers less actively hostile to them.

Re: Red Hat to remove contentious terms like master and slave from its source code

#68

Post by ogre_codes »

bdcravens wrote: post #10

In discussions about this on social media, there's significant push back from those who are actually affected by the issues BLM is fighting for, who feel moves like this are more white guilt with no real change for what really matters. I'm sure an at-risk youth, when pulled over by two white police officers, is grateful that a bunch of highly paid programmers aren't subjected to politically incorrect variable names.…

> I'm sure an at-risk youth, when pulled over by two white police officers, is grateful that a bunch of highly paid programmers aren't subjected to politically incorrect variable names.

Why would this affect anyone getting pulled over by the police? Neither the police, nor the motorist are going to be looking over source code.

This is 100% about black developers. Have you bothered asking black developers how they feel about this?

Re: Red Hat to remove contentious terms like master and slave from its source code

#69

Post by gruez »

Shish2k wrote: post #25
Dig1t wrote: post #5

Google is also mass refactoring internally as well, blacklist/whitelist are now blocklist/allowlist and so on. It's quite a bit of churn.

> blacklist/whitelist are now blocklist/allowlist and so on We did that… and then a week later, got informed that “blocklist” is still racist because it “looks similar to blacklist” and now we need to do a second refactoring to change it to “denylist”

>ot informed that “blocklist” is still racist because it “looks similar to blacklist”

wtf?? Are we going to rename while loops too because it looks too close to "white"? Or blockchain because it looks too close to "blackchain" (slavery reference)?

Re: Red Hat to remove contentious terms like master and slave from its source code

#70

Post by ogre_codes »

bonoetmalo wrote: post #36
Jabbles wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please provide a link to support your assertion that "the BLM core" is giving "significant push back".

I think maybe a better question/support would be evidence that anybody besides corporate diversity teams have said this is a problem. To be clear- I also think the terms are problematic and my company is also pushing for it. But I think it's worth asking whether we're speaking over actual black people. It does give off pretty heavy white guilt vibes. Edit: I think a good example of this is the fact that my company is…

> I think maybe a better question/support would be evidence that anybody besides corporate diversity teams have said this is a problem.

Black programmers have been asking and pushing for this change for some time and many open source projects (which lack "corporate diversity teams") have acted independently to address this because it's an issue that's been raised by black programmers.

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