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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

#71

Post by basch »

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 just wish the community would have agreed to terms before making changes, instead of everybody for themselves.

Allowlist/denylist are perfectly fine if everybody uses them. But fragmented blocklist/denylist/etc sucks.

A lot of the suggestions for master/slave don't illustrate the same relationship between components, roles.

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

#72

Post by dredds »

sradman wrote: post #55
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. Neither can Master Wayne, according to Alfred, who is as polite as a school master. Of course, the Dark Knight did not have a masters degree, nor the spirituality of a Zen master, nor the concentration of a chess master. I am a certified dive master. I was close friends with several build masters. Of the great masters, Monet is my favorite. I hope to master my fear. Seinfeld fa…

Master and Slave Cylinder.. Automotive and Engineering. Will blue collar thought police be as compliant as (ahem) WHITE collar workers?

Uh. "Workers" has slave connotations. Employees. Wards of the State of Private Prisons. Hard Labor = Slave Labor. Are pregnant women now offended? WoMAN. I mean FeMALE. Damn this is hard..

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

#73

Post by entropea »

ogre_codes wrote: post #46
entropea wrote: post #3

What does stuff like this actually do except give them some good PR? It doesn't end racism or help black lives at all. It seems like a corporate facade of change while ignoring the real material issues of life for black inidividuals that these major protests pointed out.

Maybe you should read the perspective of why a black programmer finds it offensive and took action about it: https://www.cnet.com/news/twitter-engineers-replace-racially... Also, this isn't a "New" issue/ BLM issue, while it's been sped up by BLM, companies have been moving this way for some time. Python dropped Master/ Slave 2 years ago, before it was trendy.

I'm not against it if thats how I came off, I apologise if it sounded like that. I'm more against the corporate PR campaigns that drown out real material change for black individuals that those like Martin Luther King with the Poor People Campaign fought for. It happens over and over and I'm sick of seeing nothing actually change in society except for 15 minutes of corporate feel good time.

Those ideas, police & prison reform, housing reform, water & infrastructure, education, for black individuals is what I want to see. Systemic change that will actually have a real effect.

I was out for the past 3-4 weeks protesting against police brutality and BLM and it just seems like such a waste when syrup labels and github parent branches are the only change I really see occurring.

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

#74

Post by bioinformatics »

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.

That's why I don't even read these words in the dictionary. The triggers are immense.

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

#75

Post by rich_sasha »

lmilcin wrote: post #43
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.

The downside is this is pretty meaningless. The words "master" and "slave" are not cause of pain and suffering and even erasing them from the vocabulary is not going to change anything. Never in my life even for a second I had any connotation between words master and slave used in IT and any derogatory meaning for anybody. I don't remember a single instance in the past 20 years when I could possibly link any utteranc…

The big companies could instead pay their engineers to tutor underprivileged kids or let the do shadowing. But no, let’s rename everything, and do a press release.

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

#76

Post by dingaling »

slipheen wrote: post #47

One thought that I had seen elsewhere on this subject really stood out to me. When these phrases are being replaced, their replacements are almost always more descriptive terms for that specific project, and the way those servers interact. For example- In Jenkins you run a "master" which schedules jobs, and "slaves" which run the jobs. After they updated their terminology, they referred to the job-runner as a "Agents…

One has to be careful though, because in espionage the 'agents' are non-professionals bribed or coerced to do the dangerous dirty-hands work. They're expendable and deniable.

Many, many words hold additional meanings that aren't obvious to the mainstream.

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

#77

Post by Simulacra »

cs02rm0 wrote: post #52
simion314 wrote: post #23

IMO if you change this terms with even better ones(that are more clear and more specific for the domain) then is great.

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.

Random thought: Who will adopt faster, the younger programers, or older?

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

#78

Post by simion314 »

cs02rm0 wrote: post #65
simion314 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, so what I am thinking as an example is when we create new code, say I have a feature that is available for users that have account of type A,B,C but not D or E , so I always do something like let allowedPlans = [A,B,C]. isn't this more cleared then if I named the list whiteListedPlans ? IMO is more clear and it translates better.

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

#79

Post by simion314 »

cs02rm0 wrote: post #52
simion314 wrote: post #23

IMO if you change this terms with even better ones(that are more clear and more specific for the domain) then is great.

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.

My idea was that if you use more clear words then it is easy to replace more unclear ones.

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

#80

Post by dredds »

ogre_codes wrote: post #68
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 fee…

> Have you bothered asking black developers how they feel about this?

Insanity. Take a step back from being American for a sec. White folk were sent to Australian labor camps for stealing a loaf of bread. Slaves were not only Black. Are Egyptians tearing down their pyramids? No. It's nonsensical.

Real racists do exist, but meanings evolve. Sinister no longer means left-handed.

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