Loaded terms in free software
The idea that our choices of words matter is not a new one in this community. The classic example would have to be the Free Software Foundation (FSF), which has tried to change our use of language since the beginning. Consider the FSF's lengthy "words to avoid" list for no end of examples:
The FSF has often refused to talk with news organizations (including LWN) without an advance promise that at least some of its word-use proscriptions would be followed in any resulting article. The loss of coverage resulting from that condition is, seemingly, considered a price worth paying in order to keep distance from perceived illegitimate use of loaded terms.
In the wider community, terms like "master" and "slave" have been the source of discomfort for some time; some projects have moved away from those terms in recent years. Current events — and not just in the U.S. — have raised awareness and greatly accelerated efforts in this direction. The topic has recently come up in the kernel community, which has also been discussing a proposal to replace "blacklist" and "whitelist" with "denylist" and "allowlist".
This discussion is not just limited to the kernel, though. The Git community is debating renaming the default "master" branch to something else — a change that is already being made at major Git-hosting companies and which is almost certain to be adopted. Similar discussions are being held in the Ansible community, the curl project, the Go language community, the OpenSSL project, the PHP community, and beyond. The Python community mostly eliminated these terms in 2018.
Needless to say, there has been opposition to these changes. Some of it comes from the usual spontaneous sock-puppet accounts that proliferate around this kind of discussion — but not all of it. Opponents make the point that words with the same spelling have different meanings in English, and that a slave device has nothing to do with an enslaved human. Making these changes, they argue, distorts the language, creates endless code churn, and confuses users in support of a sort of political correctness that does little, if anything, to address the actual problem of systemic racism. There is also a slippery-slope argument that can be heard; will one get into trouble for claiming to have mastered a difficult subject or listing one's master's degree on a resume? What should the kernel's position be on red-black trees?
What should we do?
Unsurprisingly, your editor has an opinion on this subject, though it has shifted some over the years. Words are important, they are the tool with which many of us ply our trades. The English language requires speakers to keep multiple possible meanings for a word distinct in their minds, and a slave controller really does have nothing to do with an enslaved person. Attempts to control the language used by others are fraught at best and outright dangerous at worst; Orwell dwelt long on Newspeak in 1984 for a reason.
But that is an easy position for some of us to take.
Your editor received a fairly standard 20th century American education, which presented slavery as an evil from a previous time, something that had been left behind long before our grandparents were born. To somebody with your editor's background, it is easy to see slavery as being about as relevant as the horse-and-carriage trade — not something that often comes to mind, and certainly not something that should be driving 21st-century software development.
Recent events, though, have made it clear — even to those of us who were happy to not question this view — that the story of slavery and the wider racist systems around it is not yet finished. There are many people who are still living in the middle of it, and it is not a nice place to be. We are not so enlightened as we like to think we are.
If there is no other lesson from the events of the last few weeks, we should certainly take to heart the point that we need to be listening to the people who have been saying, for many years, that they are still suffering. If there are people who are telling us that terms like "slave" or "blacklist" are a hurtful reminder of the inequities that persist in our society, we need to accept that as the truth and act upon it. Etymological discussions on what, say, "master" really means may be interesting, but they miss the point and are irrelevant to this discussion.
In other words, we should make those changes. It's a tiny step, and it does little or nothing to address the real problems, but it is a statement of support and a way of being more inclusive toward a large subset of humanity that is severely underrepresented in our community.
The grungy details
Even after we have made the decision to listen — as it seems likely we will do at this point — execution will not be easy. Consider the scope of the problem in the kernel community, for example; quick fixes are not to be had.
The kernel has over 41,000 occurrences of the word "master" in its repository, and over 26,000 of "slave". "Blacklist" appears nearly 1,000 times, while "whitelist" has over 600 occurrences. Any attempt to change all of those in any near-term way would snarl kernel development in general and bring the work of thousands of developers to a halt. It would break the agreement in how kernel code and various specifications (and device datasheets) use terms, with unpleasant effects on the ongoing maintainability of the code. Changing names in exposed data structures would likely break the compilation of numerous applications.
So a massive search-and-replace operation seems out of the question. What the kernel community can do, though, is to decide not to accept submissions that add the use of these terms in the future. When proposed additions use terminology from a specification maintained by others, those terms could be changed in a predictable way or, in some cases, the submission could be refused until the specification is changed. Those changes seem likely to happen; the same sorts of conversations are ongoing in standards groups too. Meanwhile, individual subsystems could make changes where they make sense, at a pace that can be absorbed without disruption.
We appear to be in one of those times where attitudes undergo a fast shift
and, hopefully, some sort of meaningful social progress is made. There are
a lot of things we can be doing in the free-software community to support
those changes — changes that, with luck, will serve to expand our community
and make us that much stronger. It would be a poor time to be
standing in the way of this progress. Thinking about the words we use and
making changes to avoid those that are unnecessarily hurtful seems like a
small thing to ask.
Posted Jun 17, 2020 17:13 UTC (Wed)
by rbranco (subscriber, #129813)
[Link] (114 responses)
Posted Jun 17, 2020 17:26 UTC (Wed)
by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
[Link] (11 responses)
As the author of some Git tooling myself, going through and removing the assumption that a branch named "master" exists at all and, if it does, is the natural destination for all code, is a benefit anyways. Will I rename my repo branches? Depends on how much work that involves and what other contributors to the projects consider reasonable disruption. But I'll probably use whatever upstream default ends up being used. Either way, I'm glad that there will now exist a blessed way to ask what that is without asking the remote server what its `HEAD` branch name is (which is still canonical, but not being forced to consider network failures into your repo info query codepaths is always a benefit). Asking `refs/remotes/origin/HEAD` is OK, but there seems to be some difference in bare clones and it doesn't quite work flawlessly in my testing.
Now if only there were a way to query what the name of the default *remote* is existed…
Posted Jun 17, 2020 17:27 UTC (Wed)
by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
[Link]
For new projects. Renaming and migration to whatever any new default is would still be subject to disruption calculus.
Posted Jun 17, 2020 18:05 UTC (Wed)
by rbranco (subscriber, #129813)
[Link] (1 responses)
The discussion is already underway:
http://public-inbox.org/git/a34e4244-835e-976a-8fb4-7fc76...
Posted Jun 17, 2020 19:30 UTC (Wed)
by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
[Link]
Posted Jun 18, 2020 17:11 UTC (Thu)
by NAR (subscriber, #1313)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jun 18, 2020 18:47 UTC (Thu)
by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
[Link]
And even here it is a name change (that I expect most should be able to reconcile with an old tutorial and a single difference when they try to replicate its steps), not something as fundamental as an installer or partition editor rewrite. Sure, there will be people who don't put 2+2 together for a default branch name change, but I feel they have a *long* road ahead of them anyways with Git in that case…
Posted Jun 18, 2020 18:55 UTC (Thu)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link]
Posted Jun 19, 2020 18:32 UTC (Fri)
by amarao (guest, #87073)
[Link] (3 responses)
May be here is the better place to ask.
My question: is there someone who have their ancestors been enslaved, who is offended by use of master/slave in technical documentation of source code. A simple "I'm offended" would be enough.
Insofar I never saw anyone saying this for themselves, only people with 'it may be offencive for someone else".
My grand grand dad was a krepostnoy in Russia. I'm not offended. Is there someone who is?
Posted Jun 22, 2020 9:45 UTC (Mon)
by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958)
[Link]
However of course I have no way of confirming they were actually who they said they were.
Posted Jun 25, 2020 19:30 UTC (Thu)
by jwarnica (subscriber, #27492)
[Link]
(I'll expand on my quip that as I wrote it, I changed "beefing up" to "improving". Its a idiom in common use, but changing it to something more accurate and less offensive cost me nothing.)
Posted Jul 1, 2020 5:09 UTC (Wed)
by anton.molyboha (guest, #62820)
[Link]
Posted Jun 21, 2020 11:02 UTC (Sun)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link]
They will happily make Arian products in Nazi Germany, Jewish products in Israël, Latino products under Obama and Mexican-free products under Trump.
Don’t ask a commercial entity to take a political position (except on their own taxes).
Posted Jun 17, 2020 21:35 UTC (Wed)
by Karellen (subscriber, #67644)
[Link] (59 responses)
a) From the article (emphasis mine): b) From an email by Bastien Nocera to the desktop-devel-list thread Replacing "master" reference in git branch names: Why is that branch called master? Probably because BitKeeper uses "master" for its main branch: But maybe this "master" isn't the same one that's in "master/slave"? See the documentation about master/slave repositories: But repositories and branches aren't the same! They are in BitKeeper: So, yes, the "git master" branch probably isn't even a "master copy" reference, but a straight up master/slave reference. (Thanks to Brendan O'Leary)
Posted Jun 17, 2020 22:57 UTC (Wed)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (55 responses)
Which society is that? Yes I accept that - FOR SOME PEOPLE - it may have hurtful connotations, but for other people (like me) the word "master" doesn't have any of those connotations - it's more master/servant, which is still perfectly normal in society today. Or "little boy" as in "Master Jimmy" the son of the house ...
For the record, I have no objection to any change (and quite agree that any assumption that the master branch is actually called "master" is dangerous), but I really do object to the confusion between the global and the parochial - you may have a parochial problem with the word master, but it's not a global problem (despite America thinking the world ends at its borders ... :-)
Cheers,
Posted Jun 18, 2020 5:40 UTC (Thu)
by jezuch (subscriber, #52988)
[Link] (43 responses)
Posted Jun 18, 2020 7:08 UTC (Thu)
by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501)
[Link] (2 responses)
Slavery used to be a norm. It's no longer the norm. The UK has a part in changing that norm.
Posted Jun 18, 2020 8:45 UTC (Thu)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link] (1 responses)
TBF, we banned slavery at the point where mechanisation allowed a rich nation (us) to maintain an advantage over poorer nations which could afford slave labour but not machines. We also compensated slave owners within the empire for the loss of that slave labour, allowing them to afford to mechanise, while simultaneously attacking other nations' sources of income and labour.
Net good? Sure. But not as praiseworthy as you might think.
Posted Jun 22, 2020 12:41 UTC (Mon)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link]
i.e. we kept slavery out of sight to salve our consciences: it has a *different name now*, it can't be slavery!
(And then we *did* ban it across the empire, thirty whole years before the US had its local slavery war... by, uh, buying out the owners. I'm not really sure giving slavers a huge pile of money actually counts as entirely praiseworthy, even if it *did* end slavery Empire-wide.)
(This is also why I don't think changing a bunch of names will have much of an effect. We did exactly that around 1800 and it didn't have much effect. What had an effect was *eliminating slavery*.)
Posted Jun 18, 2020 12:51 UTC (Thu)
by Rudd-O (guest, #61155)
[Link] (28 responses)
Why is it that anti-racists salivate at accusing Western societies, which fixed social scourges hundreds of years ago, but never actually credit those societies for fixing those scourges?
(Hint: it's a cult.)
Posted Jun 18, 2020 15:51 UTC (Thu)
by ebassi (subscriber, #54855)
[Link] (3 responses)
The UK eradicated slavery first. Haiti has entered the channel. Slavery only exists on non-caucasian countries now The United States has entered the channel.
Posted Jun 21, 2020 11:50 UTC (Sun)
by ehiggs (subscriber, #90713)
[Link] (2 responses)
Slavery was banned in England in 1772 (some would say 1102); in Haiti in 1804. Across British Empire in 1834 (Slavery Abolition act of 1833).
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Slave...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_sl...
Posted Jun 21, 2020 12:31 UTC (Sun)
by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784)
[Link] (1 responses)
So for all meaningful purposes, we didn't abolish slavery until the 1830s.
Posted Jun 21, 2020 21:47 UTC (Sun)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
Cheers,
Posted Jun 18, 2020 16:57 UTC (Thu)
by jezuch (subscriber, #52988)
[Link] (7 responses)
Posted Jun 19, 2020 13:28 UTC (Fri)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link] (6 responses)
Much better to keep language as it is, admit racism did exist, does exist, and will exist, and make sure not to perpetuate it yourself instead of using tartuffian fig leafs. Statues glorifying racism are one thing, everyday’s language is another.
I had the chance to visit Egyptian temples. Seeing Millenia-old monuments, depicting bloody pharaonic victories over various tribes (represented in abject objectively racist poses), defaced Millenia ago by early Christians, before more racist history rewriting by Arab Muslim conquerors, whose descendants complain today or European racism (while continuing to treat the Christian minority like dirt, and looking down on “dark” Sudanese) really drives home the utter futility of making things “good” by rewriting the past.
Rewriting the past won’t make you good. Rewriting the past won’t make you right. The only thing that will make you good and right and thoughtful is behaving good and right and thoughtful.
Posted Jun 19, 2020 14:44 UTC (Fri)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link] (4 responses)
No; rewriting the language we use is not about brushing things under the carpet. It's about separating inoffensive terminology (like that used for a read-only server that maintains a full copy of a writeable server's database) from offensive terminology (like that used to describe humans treated as commodity machinery), so that the only uses left of the words in question relate to the offensive uses.
That way, you (for example) know that when someone's talking in English about a slave, they're talking about a human being treated as a commodity, and not about a computer system; there's no chance of someone who's deliberately trying to cause upset claiming after the fact that they weren't referring to humans, but to computers, if the only use left is about humans or historic jargon.
It's similar to the modern loss of the 20th century American slang phrase "nigger in the woodpile". Relegating that particular way of saying "there are important facts being hidden here behind other important facts" to historic uses only is part of making it harder for people who choose to use words to cause upset to then pretend that they didn't mean it as offensive, they were just using a common phrase. We're not rewriting the past by stopping the use of that phrase - we are simply ensuring that it's harder for a racist to pretend that they didn't mean to be rude, they were just using a common phrase that causes upset.
Posted Jun 19, 2020 15:06 UTC (Fri)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link] (3 responses)
Politicians and markeeting people do it all the time.
Posted Jun 19, 2020 15:24 UTC (Fri)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link] (2 responses)
And you (a) assume things about me that aren't true, and (b) thoroughly overestimate the value of coded and loaded sentences for recruiting people who do not currently agree with you.
Bringing your co-believers along with you is easy; keeping the ideology going and recruiting new people is hard, and if you're in a position of having to say "we have a minority view, because we can't talk about it openly", you turn off far more people by having to say "well, we're an unpopular minority with our views" than you gain by the feeling of being part of a secret organisation.
It's why politicians like to talk about the "silent majority" - the idea is that people who aren't actively opposing you probably agree, but don't dare say it. If everyone's actively opposing, it becomes harder to make that argument.
Posted Jun 19, 2020 17:56 UTC (Fri)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jun 19, 2020 21:55 UTC (Fri)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
Everyone needs an "us" and "them". In nature, species (and groups, and tribes) all want "Lebensraum". And unfortunately, skin colour, or accent, or any other distinguishable feature, rapidly becomes a basis for said "us" and "them". Isn't that how Peacocks grew such long tails?
Cheers,
Posted Jun 20, 2020 6:56 UTC (Sat)
by jezuch (subscriber, #52988)
[Link]
Posted Jun 18, 2020 22:47 UTC (Thu)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (14 responses)
And conveniently forget that most white slave traders bought their slaves from African ports, from African tribes! They did NOT go into the interior and capture the slaves themselves ...
Cheers,
Posted Jun 19, 2020 8:09 UTC (Fri)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link] (10 responses)
That, in turn, conveniently forgets two truths about the African tribes capturing slaves:
We can go deeper and deeper down this rabbit hole, but there's no getting away from the fact that European colonials created the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and irreparably altered the African slave trade from its original sense.
Posted Jun 19, 2020 9:09 UTC (Fri)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link] (9 responses)
All other things being equal, the French went into Agincourt with enough war tech to win the battle easily. They lost because the English made good use of the tech they had, while the French leadership let glory-seeking feudal lords squander their heavy cavalry advantage in fruitless charges over a narrow muddy battlefield (and that in turn was more a result of a loaded political situation French side than clear mismanagement by the French commander).
Posted Jun 19, 2020 9:20 UTC (Fri)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link] (8 responses)
The French had the volume of tech, but no significant technical advantage - the English had the same tech level. Now imagine that the French showed up with firearms, so they could kill the English archers at long range - so that they killed off the English troops before they could even notch an arrow.
With that level of advantage, the French would have won despite their incompetent leadership - and the only way for the English to win would be to also show up with firearms.
Posted Jun 19, 2020 10:52 UTC (Fri)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (5 responses)
Basically, it was longbows versus crossbows - the French crossbow was far superior in range and power. The problem for the French was that our longbows were the equivalent of a sem-automatic versus a muzzle loader - in the time it took for a crossbow to reload our archers could run the missing range and fire four or five arrows.
Incidentally, talking of firearms at Agincourt, did you know that one side apparently DID turn up with firearms?! According to my musket-toting friend, Agincourt was the first European battle at which they made an appearance.
Cheers,
Posted Jun 19, 2020 11:04 UTC (Fri)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link] (4 responses)
Our tech and the French tech were comparable but different - they had range and power, we had rate of fire.
Compare, however, our longbows or the French crossbows to a British Land Pattern Musket or Charleville Musket; if the French had been equipped with those instead of crossbows, and had sufficient ammunition, it wouldn't have been much of a fight; such weapons would be overwhelming.
Posted Jun 19, 2020 14:59 UTC (Fri)
by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
[Link]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDnKciXrmnc
I'd have to rewatch to remember enough to comment myself in this thread though.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 7:22 UTC (Sat)
by patrick_g (subscriber, #44470)
[Link]
We (French) lost in Agincourt but we learned our lesson and won the last battle of the Hundred Years' War with a "massive usage of field artillery".
Posted Jun 20, 2020 15:45 UTC (Sat)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link] (1 responses)
So you can not even argue that crossbows were more or less effective than bows, muskets or rifles, they were not used to their potential in this battle.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 16:52 UTC (Sat)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
Cheers,
Posted Jun 19, 2020 13:44 UTC (Fri)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link] (1 responses)
They knew it and the English knew it. The English were so convinced of it they were in full retreat before the battle.
That’s why the battle had such an echo. The French managed to grasp defeat from the jaws of a sure victory (or the English managed to grasp victory from the jaws of a sure defeat, depending on which side you you look at it from).
Contemporaries were amazed at how things played out.
Posted Jun 19, 2020 13:46 UTC (Fri)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link]
Posted Jun 19, 2020 8:48 UTC (Fri)
by ncm (guest, #165)
[Link]
Slaves were kept in Africa, but the conditions were radically different. Slaves could own property, their children were not slaves, and they could not be maimed or killed. The condition was more akin to debt peonage. Any slave could reasonably expect to be free again someday. But once sold down the river, their life as social beings was over.
Posted Jun 22, 2020 16:33 UTC (Mon)
by Rudd-O (guest, #61155)
[Link] (1 responses)
I saw another commenter in this thread try to move the goalposts by including "Western human trafficking" as whataboutism to the open air slave markets today. Needless to say, I'm not impressed with that dumb nonargument, because that response was yet /another/ form of unfairly criticizing Western civilization, except human trafficking is a global problem rather than a problem specific to the West.
Posted Jun 22, 2020 16:43 UTC (Mon)
by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784)
[Link]
We should do something about that, as well.
"Stop buying petroleum from those countries" would be a good start.
Posted Jun 19, 2020 6:05 UTC (Fri)
by TopherIsSwell (guest, #139628)
[Link]
Posted Jun 18, 2020 12:55 UTC (Thu)
by mfuzzey (subscriber, #57966)
[Link] (8 responses)
There's a difference between saying "racism is not my problem" or "my country has no racism problems" (which Wol wasn't)
I live in France.
France, as a former colonial power, has a lot of skeletons in its cupboard as well.
What we don't have (or if we do it is so minor as not to be noticeable) is people trying to change language in unrelated domains.
The "let's change technical language" camp seems to be mostly American.
Posted Jun 18, 2020 23:02 UTC (Thu)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (6 responses)
Given that modern English is a whole bunch of *similar* languages, not one language, there isn't any such thing as "British English". Down south us Saxons speak English. Up north them Angles speak Scots. And the true Scots speak Gaelic. (While the Welsh and Cornish speak ancient Briton :-)
The saxons came in from the North Sea taking over the south. I think the Vikings came down from Scandinavia to take over the north-east. And I can't remember who came down the western coast to take over the north-west. Plus the original Britons hung on to the Highlands and Wales.
So in what is roughly modern-day England we had three different nations, with similar grammars, which have now merged into modern English Grammar. (And to some extent had a layer of Norman French imposed on top.) What has NOT merged, even today, is accent and vocabulary, which is why Scouse and Geordie are almost incomprehensible to the untrained Queens English ear. Even Brummie can be hard to understand. And the Americans try to lump it together as one language?!?!
Cheers,
Posted Jun 18, 2020 23:31 UTC (Thu)
by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784)
[Link] (5 responses)
(Incidentally, the 2011 census showed over half of the Scottish population had no communication skills in Scots.)
Posted Jun 19, 2020 1:27 UTC (Fri)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (2 responses)
Or do you actually mean the majority of the Scottish population cannot speak Gaelic? Which would be no surprise because neither the Highlands nor the Lowlands have had a native Scots population for well over a millennia - if ever - although I believe the Picts did/do speak Gaelic. (The Scots have the same relationship to Scotland as the Normans have to England - they conquered it unexpectedly some time about 900AD - I was taught English history not Scottish.)
Scots the language is not the native language of the Scots the people :-)
"The Saxons speak English, the Angles speak Scots, the Scots speak Gaelic".
Cheers,
Posted Jun 19, 2020 9:31 UTC (Fri)
by amacater (subscriber, #790)
[Link] (1 responses)
Philologists tell us that "English" is closest to West Frisian. The Danes (in the East and Norwegians in York and chunks of Ireland) left us a very few Norse words but left masses to Orkney and Shetland. The Norman-French influence merged with later reintroduction of Latin derived words - Latin being the language of the Church, education and science until at least 1700. A standardisation in English is only true post Chaucer and Caxton.
British English / Commonwealth English is marked primarily by spelling and some pronunciation differences and is largely down to printing standardisation post 1650 or so. American English is down to, at least partly, Noah Webster wanting to distinguish American from English for national pride. It does depend very much where your teacher learned your English as to what you prefer: large parts of Europe speak British English except, perhaps, the former American sector in Germany whoa had access to US Forces radio :)
Posted Jun 23, 2020 7:15 UTC (Tue)
by xoddam (guest, #2322)
[Link]
Posted Jun 19, 2020 8:47 UTC (Fri)
by eru (subscriber, #2753)
[Link]
Posted Jun 20, 2020 21:54 UTC (Sat)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
I think you mean "the norm of the southern half of Great Britain". Why should the literary norm take precedence over the spoken norm? Why should the vocabulary of one half of the country take precedence over the other half?
A lot of the troubles we have here is that - outside of London - a LARGE portion of the country feels marginalised and ignored. Having a separate folk history, the other three nations find it easier to express that dissatisfaction, but northern England feels marginalised too. That's NOT helped by outside forces assuming that "England == Britain". It's as bad as lumping Mexico and Canada in with the US and tarring them with the same brush.
That's why I don't feel English - I don't feel part of the "little Englander" mentality that seems to pervade the attitude of those who buy ink by the barrel ...
Cheers,
Posted Jun 24, 2020 8:26 UTC (Wed)
by marcH (subscriber, #57642)
[Link]
BTW I wonder how many languages have "workarounds" like: the F-word. I don't remember British or Irish people doing that.
> The "let's change technical language" camp seems to be mostly American.
It's even more specific: it's mostly the American Left. One of the too many and worryingly growing gaps between the US Left and Right is the language. While some people on the left believe "dark ages" or "age of enlightenment" are modern and racist expressions, many on the right support the current president because he "speaks like us, not like them". In other words he has no filter and says whatever words cross his mind at any point in time. While the Left obviously consider this as a "bug", it's literally a _feature_ for the Right. Then the propaganda on each side keeps deriding the other. Two parallel universes separated by a common language.
While the whole world seems to turn more and more tribal every day, the US seem to really lead the pack
https://www.google.com/search?q=everything+is+fine&tb...
> (not as bad as the US thankfully but still unacceptable).
Right, these are also uniquely American: poorly trained and educated cops (cause: taxes!) shooting suspects on sight who can keep their job until they're unlucky and a video of them makes the news. Barely any safety net (cause: taxes) that keeps inequality between the (mostly black) poor and (mostly white) rich growing and growing, even before racism and redlining. Little social services that gives poor people no other choice than follow their community leaders and very large freedom of speech that allows some of the latter to market any crazy and/or racist idea they want.
Now a fun fact people outside the US seem to often forget: the language of computers is _American English_ and yes it comes "loaded" with some of that. Hence these attempts to "unload" it a bit.
Posted Jun 18, 2020 13:01 UTC (Thu)
by gb (subscriber, #58328)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jun 18, 2020 23:22 UTC (Thu)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
Cheers,
Posted Jun 18, 2020 8:24 UTC (Thu)
by Karellen (subscriber, #67644)
[Link] (10 responses)
Say another piece of software got popular, and someone from halfway around the world of the original developer filed a bug report saying "Hey, you're probably not aware of this because almost no-one who wasn't born here is, but the term "foo" which you've used throughout your software has a really bad history in my culture. Its meaning is tied up with systems that caused massive amounts of harm to a large fraction of our population, the effects of which are still being felt today. The way that "foo" is used in a prominent fashion throughout your software is going to make half the people in my culture really uncomfortable about using it. Would you consider using the word "bar" instead, which has a similar meaning in the context of your software, but doesn't have the same connotations for us as "foo"? I can create a patch for the change if you'd be willing to take a look at it. I think your software (which is awesome, btw) would be a lot more usable to a few million potential new users with this change."
Do you really think that the original dev closing that bug report as "WORKSFORME", saying "Lol, no. "foo" doesn't make *me* uncomfortable. Sucks to be anyone from your culture, I guess." would not be a dick move?
(With bonus dick move points for impling the request is an attempt to bring about Orwell's Ministry of Truth, using newspeak to erase history by "banning" the word "foo".)
Just because a problem doesn't affect one person (or group), that's not a very good reason to totally dismiss the problems of others. Imagine if Linus had never accepted Linux patches for hardware that he didn't own.
Posted Jun 19, 2020 10:11 UTC (Fri)
by NAR (subscriber, #1313)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jun 19, 2020 16:31 UTC (Fri)
by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
[Link]
I'm not 100% sure, but I believe the term "mute" is the accepted term for those who cannot speak (whether do to a physical limitation or trauma). Other terms used historically such as "dumb" are probably not as acceptable today due to the other meanings it has. See also "midget" not generally being acceptable for those with dwarfism due to the connotations the word gained via PT Barnam's way of publicizing his shows.
We do still need words for things, but the historical baggage that words pick up doesn't leave the words unaffected and they can phased out as cultural shifts happen around them.
Posted Jun 24, 2020 8:01 UTC (Wed)
by mvdwege (guest, #113583)
[Link]
Posted Jun 19, 2020 18:55 UTC (Fri)
by gray_-_wolf (subscriber, #131074)
[Link] (6 responses)
Because I'm fairly sure lots of words can be *something* bad in *some*
Hey, that's an idea for bot right here. Cross reference open-source projects
Posted Jun 19, 2020 19:02 UTC (Fri)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link]
Posted Jun 20, 2020 7:15 UTC (Sat)
by jezuch (subscriber, #52988)
[Link] (4 responses)
It's a different matter with slaves, though. I found the term odd in the beginning but I was not a native speaker so I thought that if the native speakers are fine with it then so be it. It seems that it has finally changed :)
Posted Jun 20, 2020 7:40 UTC (Sat)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jun 20, 2020 12:06 UTC (Sat)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
Cheers,
Posted Jun 20, 2020 13:38 UTC (Sat)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
Cheers,
Posted Jun 24, 2020 8:55 UTC (Wed)
by marcH (subscriber, #57642)
[Link]
Lucky the ones who think they understand how language works...
Posted Jun 18, 2020 9:00 UTC (Thu)
by hadess (subscriber, #24252)
[Link] (1 responses)
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2020-J...
Posted Jun 18, 2020 9:16 UTC (Thu)
by Karellen (subscriber, #67644)
[Link]
Posted Jun 20, 2020 0:14 UTC (Sat)
by rbranco (subscriber, #129813)
[Link]
Posted Jun 18, 2020 3:09 UTC (Thu)
by pabs (subscriber, #43278)
[Link] (40 responses)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_(slang)
Posted Jun 18, 2020 3:19 UTC (Thu)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (37 responses)
Posted Jun 18, 2020 8:07 UTC (Thu)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
Cheers,
Posted Jun 18, 2020 11:15 UTC (Thu)
by dottedmag (subscriber, #18590)
[Link] (35 responses)
What if systems engineers (dozens of thousands of them) around the world cringe hearing about a "system" with no physical 4D-extent, no external roles defined and no emergent function assigned, would that be enough to ban "system" from all the software?
Posted Jun 18, 2020 17:44 UTC (Thu)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (34 responses)
> What if systems engineers (dozens of thousands of them) around the world cringe hearing about a "system" with no physical 4D-extent, no external roles defined and no emergent function assigned, would that be enough to ban "system" from all the software?
Posted Jun 19, 2020 11:02 UTC (Fri)
by dottedmag (subscriber, #18590)
[Link] (5 responses)
Posted Jun 20, 2020 6:02 UTC (Sat)
by comex (subscriber, #71521)
[Link] (4 responses)
In the actual situation, the word "master" causes discomfort by itself, which is why its use is problematic even if you aren't using it to refer to actual slavery. A systems engineer, on the other hand, is not discomfited by the word "system" itself. I suppose they might have the discomfort of a pedantic itch to correct a supposed misuse of terminology? Of course, there is no actual misuse, since the colloquial use of the word "system" predates the discipline of systems engineering by millennia. But even if there was a misuse, the "discomfort" caused by being aware of it wouldn't be remotely comparable to what's involved here.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 11:08 UTC (Sat)
by dottedmag (subscriber, #18590)
[Link] (3 responses)
Where are the first-person accounts of discomfort? Why talks about the change don't cite them and instead hand-wave "this is bad, mmkay?"
For me it definitely smells of someone usurping the voice of suppressed for political advantage (Level-4 arguments), and without independent confirmation from the actual victims it's hard to verify if this claim is actually true at all.
> Terminology linked to histories of bloody suppression tends to cause rather deeper levels of discomfort than… well, I'm not even sure what the comparison is.
You know, I'm Slavic by nationality, and you sure know the etymology of the word. The area where I grew up was repeatedly ravaged by waves of Mongolian hordes (and according to my facial features rape also took place). Moving closer to the present time several of my ancestors were killed in WW2. Do I loathe words "slav" (or "slave" for that matter), "mongol", "national" or "socialist" either in my mother tongue, or in English? I don't give a damn, it's history.
This is my Level-1 account of how "terminology linked to histories of bloody suppression" causes deep levels of discomfort for me.
Now I'd love to hear similar Level-1 accounts from people who are discomforted by words "black" or "master". I don't mind them be anonymised if the author would feel safer (though nowadays it seems it's me who needs to be afraid of online lynching for voicing an unpopular opinion), but they need to at least make it somehow comparable to other levels of discomfort that can be related to by people who are not black.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 14:03 UTC (Sat)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
Yet another word who's meaning has changed (and distorted history as a result) over time.
When the Vikings came raping and pillaging our shores, it did NOT mean having non-consensual sex with the local women. Okay, that may well have taken place, but that wasn't the meaning of the word.
Cheers,
Posted Jun 20, 2020 19:57 UTC (Sat)
by comex (subscriber, #71521)
[Link] (1 responses)
Good question, and more relevant than your earlier systems engineer analogy. No doubt, most of the comments supporting the change are not first-person accounts. But that's not all that surprising, since most developers are not part of the marginalized group in the first place (and even those that are, if they are not also politically active, may be too embarrassed or intimidated to admit the discomfort in threads with such heated opposition). Nevertheless, here are 2 first-person accounts and 1 semi-first-person account, from the 2014 Django pull request that helped spawn the discussion about "master":
https://github.com/django/django/pull/2692#issuecomment-4...
> This is my Level-1 account of how "terminology linked to histories of bloody suppression" causes deep levels of discomfort for me.
It seems to be an account of how it does *not* cause deep levels of discomfort for you. That's fair enough, and a reasonable perspective from which to doubt that others in analogous situations feel discomfort. That said, I'd argue in the American context the issue is not *just* a history of bloody suppression, but the fact that the bloody suppression is perceived to have never completely ended. In other words, while, say, today's police killings that disproportionately affect PoC are not the same as century-old lynchings, they both have common roots in a continuous phenomenon of racism that has only partially abated over time. I am not sure whether or not there is anything analogous for Slavic peoples; feel free to enlighten me.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 22:23 UTC (Sat)
by jafd (subscriber, #129642)
[Link]
Roma (Gypsies) are one such group, and if you happen to be brunet and tan enough to be mistaken for one, you could hear comments or experience increased police attention — which may hurt sometimes. Also, while neo-nazi groups are fewer and farther between than some would like to paint it, you might get to know how many of them exactly are there in your town rather quickly, and rank them by their readiness to use violence. Oh, and there are little things: security people in supermarkets will get twitchier when you're doing shopping there, for example.
I don't remember Roma ever having been slaves to anyone, but to get a picture you could probably roughly compare them to the Mexicans in the poorer neighborhoods of the US if stereotypes I hear about them exist (that they are all involved with drug cartels, or some such).
Posted Jun 19, 2020 18:59 UTC (Fri)
by gray_-_wolf (subscriber, #131074)
[Link] (27 responses)
Could you please share what the number is? How many is enough?
Posted Jun 19, 2020 19:03 UTC (Fri)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (26 responses)
Posted Jun 19, 2020 19:07 UTC (Fri)
by dottedmag (subscriber, #18590)
[Link] (25 responses)
Posted Jun 19, 2020 19:13 UTC (Fri)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (24 responses)
You know, I used to be on the side that technical terms shouldn't be shunned based on cultural contexts. But then I saw that a significant part of people defending that approach are basically shitstains and I don't want to be associated with them even tangentially.
And after all, changing a few terms doesn't cause any issues. Just do a sed replace and move on.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 7:23 UTC (Sat)
by jezuch (subscriber, #52988)
[Link] (15 responses)
Posted Jun 20, 2020 10:32 UTC (Sat)
by Jandar (subscriber, #85683)
[Link] (12 responses)
(*) There is the argument that "master" in git comes from "master" in bitkeeper where there was a "slave", but in git there is no slave it's only an obscure historic connection. How many of the people offended by "master" in git do know of this connection to bitkeeper? As was argued several times, factual historic origins don't matter only current usage and in git there is no concept of a slave branch.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 10:53 UTC (Sat)
by dottedmag (subscriber, #18590)
[Link] (11 responses)
N- words were banned, and now "black" is a new N-word. After "black" will be banned another word will take on the same function and will be banned in turn.
Banning words won't help if the underlying problem is not addressed.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 19:42 UTC (Sat)
by smurf (subscriber, #17840)
[Link] (8 responses)
You can't ban "black", it's a freakin' color. The association with white=good and black=bad, however, is fundamentally broken. It's beyond time to stop perpetuate that nonsense. Yes it's ingrained in our culture, but that's precisely the point.
Do NOT for a single moment assume that language doesn't shape thinking. For a completely unrelated example, ask people from various European countries what they associate with a bridge spanning a valley. You get answers which are strongly associated with either "grace" or "power", depending solely on whether that word happens to carry a female or male grammatical gender in their language.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 22:03 UTC (Sat)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
For example, although a ship has no gender, they are generally considered "she". But "my ship" is "he". And I wouldn't have a clue which of those two associations I would apply to a bridge.
Cheers,
Posted Jun 20, 2020 23:42 UTC (Sat)
by Jandar (subscriber, #85683)
[Link] (2 responses)
And what do you think the so called N-word was before the ban?
Have you ever heard of Montenegro (black mountain)?
That a word has a simple descriptive meaning hasn't ever precluded a ban. And if a descriptive word is banned another word has to be used instead for describing the same thing and soon there is demand to ban the new word.
It is interesting that we have today arrived at the phrase "people of color". In my eyes this is one of the racists phrases I know of. It's basis is the construction of a fundamental divide between white and non-white whereas all non-white form an indistinctive mass with no further differentiation necessary.
Imagine you have a group of "people of color", Aborigines of Australia, African American, San people and whatever you think belongs to this group, and than you say to them: your differences are meaningless because you aren't white, being non-white is all you get as description.
One has to invent Level-5 to categorize this kind of underhand racism.
Posted Jun 21, 2020 0:46 UTC (Sun)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link] (1 responses)
Yeah, I happen to have a couple kilograms of "frijoles negros" (ie "black beans") in my pantry.
(Meanwhile, my English family name, if pronounced correctly, is a highly pejorative insult to a Turk!)
Posted Jun 22, 2020 15:12 UTC (Mon)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
:-)
Cheers,
Posted Jun 22, 2020 10:45 UTC (Mon)
by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958)
[Link]
In USA. In italian it was just a neutral descriptive term that got banned as well because of USA always exporting their culture abroad.
Posted Jun 23, 2020 9:15 UTC (Tue)
by xoddam (guest, #2322)
[Link] (1 responses)
China and Iran are not known especially for their lack of sexism, however.
Posted Jun 23, 2020 10:31 UTC (Tue)
by smurf (subscriber, #17840)
[Link]
In any case, our esteemed editor has kindly asked us to shut up now. Did you miss that?
Posted Jul 1, 2020 19:09 UTC (Wed)
by danilo (guest, #57549)
[Link]
What does not make any sense is calling people "black" or "white" because of their skin colour! I've never met a white person (my boy calls his hands to be "creamish"), nor did I meet a "black" one. But so far, that's exactly the same as white for daylight (it's not really white — black as absence of light reflection is actually pretty apt).
However, where it terribly falls apart is in calling descendants of "black" and "white" people exclusively "black". If that's not use of language reaffirming prejudiced stereotypes, I do not know what is.
So while I agree language can have an effect, I am surprised nobody worries about this particular issue which seems so much greater to me!
Posted Jun 22, 2020 13:09 UTC (Mon)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link] (1 responses)
(Do you get unhappy about the fact that you can't look at coneys hopping through the fields? Yes, a word as commonplace as "rabbit" was relatively rare until the late 19th century. And that spin of the euphemism treadmill wasn't even because "coney" was itself considered offensive, at least not in the UK: it's because it was *pronounced* the same way as a piece of anatomy that had itself caused many spins of the treadmill before then.)
The north-eastern US is going through a change in pronunciation almost as extreme as the Great Vowel Shift. Why not go and get all offended about that? It's much more linguistically significant than yet another change triggered by emotionally intense words in places people don't really *want* that emotional intensity.
Posted Jul 3, 2020 17:40 UTC (Fri)
by dottedmag (subscriber, #18590)
[Link]
Fun and appropriate fact: Red Guards committees in Beijing decided that red traffic light for "stop" is un-communistic and decreed to change green/red meaning to opposite. As you can imagine, this decision was reverted shortly afterwards, but not only before thousands of people died.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 11:49 UTC (Sat)
by dottedmag (subscriber, #18590)
[Link]
If the message is "blacklist/whitelist are bad terms anyway, why don't we change them?" then there is no problem (personally I don't see why I would use blacklist/whitelist in a new software — allow/deny are better terms).
However the message from the more aggressive proponents of the change is "you are bad person for using such racial slang, shame on you!", with implicit "there will be a smear campaign against you if you don't yield to our demands" then the answer varies from "go away" to "I'm calling my lawyer".
A side note: there is a difference between "blacklist/whitelist are bad terms" and "master is a bad term" — former is true, latter is not, so if one conflates two term changes then they are sure not interested in improving terms.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 12:12 UTC (Sat)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
CHANGE can be an absolutely MASSIVE issue. Whenever something changes in Windows it causes me a hell of a lot of grief. My inlaws are still on Windows 7. My wife wouldn't move off XP until I practically forced her on to 10.
This change will impact me, but I have no strong feelings either way. I fully sympathise with the people who oppose "change for change's sake" though, because change the context slighlty, and I will be the one screaming "don't change things, for $DEITY sake!"
Cheers,
Posted Jun 20, 2020 10:50 UTC (Sat)
by dottedmag (subscriber, #18590)
[Link] (7 responses)
Translation: "you are indecent person by my definition of decency, you must be ashamed of yourself!" Please keep it civilized.
> But then I saw that a significant part of people defending that approach are basically shitstains and I don't want to be associated with them even tangentially.
Yes, throwing the shitstains out is harder than giving up.
> And after all, changing a few terms doesn't cause any issues. Just do a sed replace and move on.
https://github.com/rubocop-hq/rubocop/issues/8091#issueco... — if a rename touches on any external interfaces it might take years to deal with all the fallout.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 17:00 UTC (Sat)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (6 responses)
> https://github.com/rubocop-hq/rubocop/issues/8091#issueco... — if a rename touches on any external interfaces it might take years to deal with all the fallout.
It's not hard.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 17:59 UTC (Sat)
by dottedmag (subscriber, #18590)
[Link] (5 responses)
There is a problem you acknowledge: a bunch of shitstains. They are hard to deal with! You may get in trouble!
The solution you propose? Start picking on people who are more easily browbeaten by the threat of "being treated with disgust". To add to the insult, you're picking on people who refuse to cede the territory to those shitstains, who should be your best allies in solving the problem.
You are a coward.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 22:36 UTC (Sat)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (4 responses)
It doesn't work. If a hateful group appropriates a symbol or name then this symbol is basically tainted for a long time (see: "ISIS" or swastika). You can try to fight it, but it would always look like you're just trying to use a dogwhistle.
Posted Jun 21, 2020 5:01 UTC (Sun)
by zlynx (guest, #2285)
[Link] (3 responses)
Every time I hear it makes me think of religious fanatics into numerology trying to predict the end of the world by how the Greek letters of Revelation add up.
Posted Jun 21, 2020 6:31 UTC (Sun)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (2 responses)
"Dogwhistle" (n) - " Politics. a political strategy, statement, slogan, etc., that conveys a controversial, secondary message understood only by those who support the message"
Posted Jun 21, 2020 7:09 UTC (Sun)
by zlynx (guest, #2285)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jun 21, 2020 7:12 UTC (Sun)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link]
"Dogwhistle" is pretty clearly defined. Example from the recent events: "All lives matter".
Posted Jun 18, 2020 16:47 UTC (Thu)
by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jun 18, 2020 23:24 UTC (Thu)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
Cheers,
Posted Jun 20, 2020 1:38 UTC (Sat)
by milesrout (subscriber, #126894)
[Link]
Posted Jun 17, 2020 17:15 UTC (Wed)
by tlamp (subscriber, #108540)
[Link] (23 responses)
The do not miss the point as much as just tagging every word with "black" or "white", or another colour of choice, resembling possibly some group of humans in some minds in a bad way, even if the have nothing to do with it.
For example Blacklist, it has "black" in it so naturally it has to come from so racist background, but it just has nothing to do with slaves, racism, ... whatsoever:
> ... and, hopefully, some sort of meaningful social progress is made
Yeah, hopefully for real. But it does not happen for sure with branding some words as bad and eradicating the use of words with "black", white, "master", etc. in them.
People need, IMO, to learn that talking about humans, living things and objects are just different thing and that the subject is the one which is affected by the terms used on them, not some bystander.
Posted Jun 17, 2020 18:07 UTC (Wed)
by smurf (subscriber, #17840)
[Link] (7 responses)
In any case, allow/deny is more descriptive anyway, esp. for people from a different cultural context, e.g. locations where white is the color of death. Also not the intended connotation, is it?
Posted Jun 18, 2020 14:34 UTC (Thu)
by pj (subscriber, #4506)
[Link] (3 responses)
Try building a bridge based on cultural sensitivity. I'm pretty sure the one built on factual correctness will stand up better.
Posted Jun 18, 2020 15:46 UTC (Thu)
by smurf (subscriber, #17840)
[Link]
Try using factual correctness to get even one of those right(eous) guys out there to admit that racial discrimination even exists. (I leave the equivalent left-ish argument as an exercise to the reader.)
Let's see how far you get with that.
Posted Jun 18, 2020 18:01 UTC (Thu)
by kmweber (guest, #114635)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jun 19, 2020 10:48 UTC (Fri)
by jafd (subscriber, #129642)
[Link]
Posted Jun 20, 2020 1:42 UTC (Sat)
by milesrout (subscriber, #126894)
[Link] (2 responses)
And by the way, please don't use the word 'trump' as a verb outside of the context of US politics, it's become highly charged and offensive blah blah blah
You see where this goes? Letting woke American Twitter idiots decide what words we're allowed to use is a terrible idea
Posted Jun 20, 2020 6:38 UTC (Sat)
by comex (subscriber, #71521)
[Link]
After all, words change meaning over time. If you accused someone of behaving "just like a computer", they would rightly interpret that as an accusation of being machine-like; it would do no good to argue that the word "computer" originally referred to an occupation.
That said, I challenge the premise. True, the term "black list" did not come to exist because of racism. But that doesn't mean it's unconnected. The causation is the other way around: the cultural notion of 'white = good, black = bad' reflected in the term likely helped shape the development of modern European racism. It may not be entirely coincidental that both "black list" and scientific racism had their origins in the mid-1600s. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism#Enlighten...
Posted Jun 20, 2020 13:42 UTC (Sat)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
Yes trumps do stink :-)
(For those who don't speak English - "to trump" is slang for "to fart")
Cheers,
Posted Jun 17, 2020 18:58 UTC (Wed)
by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
[Link] (11 responses)
The etymology of a term, I think, is less important than its current meaning and connotation. I support getting rid of terms like "master/slave" and "blacklist/whitelist", especially when the replacements are more precise and accurate.
Posted Jun 18, 2020 21:51 UTC (Thu)
by pbonzini (subscriber, #60935)
[Link]
Posted Jun 19, 2020 10:23 UTC (Fri)
by NAR (subscriber, #1313)
[Link] (9 responses)
Posted Jun 19, 2020 11:55 UTC (Fri)
by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
[Link] (3 responses)
Innie and outie? Plug and socket?
Posted Jun 20, 2020 8:27 UTC (Sat)
by jafd (subscriber, #129642)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jun 20, 2020 8:53 UTC (Sat)
by neilbrown (subscriber, #359)
[Link]
I thought an LGA socket was a bit of plastic and metal that was integrated in a motherboard, and which you inserted an LGA package into.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 14:47 UTC (Sat)
by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
[Link]
So LGA is non-binary. It can be a plug or a socket. But does it actually matter?
With respect to the actual contacts, it's a plug, but with respect to the package as a whole, it's a socket or a receptacle.
Posted Jun 24, 2020 8:09 UTC (Wed)
by mvdwege (guest, #113583)
[Link]
Posted Jul 27, 2020 5:33 UTC (Mon)
by Shabbyx (guest, #104730)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Jul 28, 2020 12:41 UTC (Tue)
by flussence (guest, #85566)
[Link] (2 responses)
Less bikeshedding, more sending the likes of ESR into hilarious public tantrums.
Posted Jul 28, 2020 14:12 UTC (Tue)
by anselm (subscriber, #2796)
[Link]
This is not very helpful with, e.g., XLR audio cables, which have a “male” plug (with prongs) at one end and a “female” plug (with holes) at the other.
Posted Jul 29, 2020 1:42 UTC (Wed)
by kjpye (subscriber, #81527)
[Link]
Posted Jun 18, 2020 5:52 UTC (Thu)
by jezuch (subscriber, #52988)
[Link] (2 responses)
As an aside, I've always been a little uncofortable with how the English language likes to "kill" things. "Kill the light" and such :)
Posted Jun 18, 2020 21:52 UTC (Thu)
by willy (subscriber, #9762)
[Link]
Posted Jun 20, 2020 2:43 UTC (Sat)
by milesrout (subscriber, #126894)
[Link]
But the people that are talking are just *other white people* virtue signalling about how 'woke' they are.
Posted Jun 17, 2020 17:20 UTC (Wed)
by yokem_55 (subscriber, #10498)
[Link] (35 responses)
The benefit of moving past this language is more than just changing cultural norms, it's better, more precise communication across the board.
Posted Jun 17, 2020 17:49 UTC (Wed)
by ms-tg (subscriber, #89231)
[Link] (33 responses)
I've also noticed this with database replication -- "leader and follower" seems much more accurate and precise than "master and slave" when describing the relationship of a replicated read-only database copy -- so I'm hopeful for the additional benefits you refer to as well!
Posted Jun 17, 2020 18:38 UTC (Wed)
by mb (subscriber, #50428)
[Link] (31 responses)
I fully agree that we must stop using racist words, that refer to people in a racist way.
But the 'master' branch in git or a 'blacklist/whitelist' do not refer to people in any way.
I'm fully Ok with avoiding such words in new developments.
Posted Jun 17, 2020 19:30 UTC (Wed)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (25 responses)
Posted Jun 18, 2020 0:31 UTC (Thu)
by Jandar (subscriber, #85683)
[Link] (20 responses)
It may be (I don't know the numbers) that a large enough group of people are deeply offended by master/slave that empathy would dictate to use other words. But to find other words which don't offend other people might not be simple.
For example try to find a word which doesn't mean (possible phonetically) something sex related in some slang in some part of the world.
Personally my favorite to replace master/slave is controller/subordinate, but who knows maybe somewhere subordinate is a deadly insult ;-)
Posted Jun 18, 2020 0:57 UTC (Thu)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (9 responses)
This is a balancing matter and it adjusts itself over time.
Posted Jun 18, 2020 7:56 UTC (Thu)
by Jandar (subscriber, #85683)
[Link] (6 responses)
Posted Jun 18, 2020 8:01 UTC (Thu)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (5 responses)
Posted Jun 18, 2020 10:03 UTC (Thu)
by smurf (subscriber, #17840)
[Link]
From my PoV the problem is not "loaded terms" but "tech slang that doesn't mean anything and can't reasonably be translated". White/blacklists are another example of this because we don't have *that* strong cultural good/bad associations with these colors.
Posted Jun 18, 2020 20:13 UTC (Thu)
by SPYFF (subscriber, #131114)
[Link] (3 responses)
---
Posted Jun 18, 2020 20:42 UTC (Thu)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jun 18, 2020 20:49 UTC (Thu)
by smurf (subscriber, #17840)
[Link] (1 responses)
The English word for "Führer" isn't "leader" (or "guide" or …) any more; since WWII, it's "führer" (or "fuhrer" for umlaut-challenged people). You don't call the write side of your database that either.
Posted Jun 19, 2020 8:58 UTC (Fri)
by jubal (subscriber, #67202)
[Link]
Posted Jun 18, 2020 15:25 UTC (Thu)
by NAR (subscriber, #1313)
[Link] (1 responses)
I feel like in the end it's about power. Some groups have the power to change the language, some don't.
Posted Jun 18, 2020 17:51 UTC (Thu)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link]
Posted Jun 18, 2020 2:54 UTC (Thu)
by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325)
[Link] (9 responses)
This is unrealistic. There are basically two options here:
1. The text will be translated (rare for source code, common for just about everything that a non-programmer might read or write).
In case (1), the translator is responsible for selecting appropriate words in the target language. If a literal translation would be rude, they are expected to rephrase as necessary. This is a completely standard thing for translators to do; if you've ever read anything translated into English, somebody probably had to modify or rewrite some idiom, joke, or other cultural reference to fit the English language, and the same happens in reverse.
For example, many languages which are not English have a plural second person ("you") pronoun. In English, most plural second person pronouns are considered slang or colloquial (y'all, yinz, youse, etc.), but in many other languages, this is a standard word that anyone might use in any context. Similarly, many other languages distinguish between formal and informal "you," but English doesn't. Translators need to smooth out both of those differences, as well as many others. You might introduce honorifics (Mr., Ms., etc.) or other courtesy markers (sir, ma'am, etc.) for the formal "you" and discourtesy markers (e.g. addressing by first name, use of unrelated slang, etc.) for the informal "you." Plural "you" might be translated as "you guys," or a similar phrase, or it might just be written as "you" if the plural can be inferred from context.
(Incidentally, this is why translation is widely regarded as an AI-complete problem. You don't just have to parse and understand the literal meaning of each word, nor even the grammar of the entire sentence. You have to understand the overall effect that each sentence has on the reader, and endeavor to recreate that effect as closely as possible.)
In case (2), the non-English speaker is unlikely to have slang associations with the English phrase, because to them, English is a foreign language. If they do have such associations, they are likely trying to translate word-for-word and reassemble the sentence in their native tongue, which is usually not a very effective way of reading a foreign language. Of course, it's not ideal to tell these people "Go study English harder and you won't make that mistake," but there are limits of accommodation. If someone frequently misinterprets standard English as slang or colloquialisms that don't exist within the English-speaking community, then further study may be the only way around the problem.
Posted Jun 18, 2020 7:08 UTC (Thu)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link]
That’s a job for history and linguistic experts, not for (potentially foreign) STEM people which have different historical and language context and are usually not interested in history and linguistic in the first place (or they would not have chosen a STEM specialization).
They will make mistakes and be lead astray by people who do have a political agenda, and did invest in history and linguistics to identify seemingly neutral terms that actually have a precise political orientation.
Posted Jun 18, 2020 8:05 UTC (Thu)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (7 responses)
Actually, you've got it the wrong way round. "You" *is* the plural, the singular is the archaic "Thou". And German (though less strongly) is the same. The plural "Sie" is the default, and the singular "Du" is the familiar used amongst friends.
Cheers,
Posted Jun 18, 2020 17:47 UTC (Thu)
by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325)
[Link] (6 responses)
Posted Jun 18, 2020 23:29 UTC (Thu)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (4 responses)
We now have one word that is BOTH plural and singular, plus a word that is archaic singular. Saying we don't have a plural is just plain wrong.
(And as I said, German is going down the same path :-)
Cheers,
Posted Jun 19, 2020 8:18 UTC (Fri)
by rschroev (subscriber, #4164)
[Link]
"y'all"?
Posted Jun 19, 2020 9:00 UTC (Fri)
by jubal (subscriber, #67202)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jun 19, 2020 12:26 UTC (Fri)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
Cheers,
Posted Jun 19, 2020 23:14 UTC (Fri)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link]
Posted Jun 19, 2020 10:52 UTC (Fri)
by jafd (subscriber, #129642)
[Link]
It is both. Like fish. Or moose. Or sheep. Or you.
Posted Jun 18, 2020 6:06 UTC (Thu)
by smurf (subscriber, #17840)
[Link] (2 responses)
German IT slang has mostly used master/slave, untranslated. This is probably going to change, but I have no idea what we'll end up with.
Personally I'm not too fond of the whole leader/follower concept anyway and would rather use source/mirror or something along these lines.
Posted Jun 18, 2020 15:31 UTC (Thu)
by intgr (subscriber, #39733)
[Link] (1 responses)
Many projects like PostgreSQL have adopted primary/replica.
Posted Jun 18, 2020 21:53 UTC (Thu)
by pbonzini (subscriber, #60935)
[Link]
Posted Jun 19, 2020 10:36 UTC (Fri)
by NAR (subscriber, #1313)
[Link]
Posted Jun 17, 2020 20:10 UTC (Wed)
by gioele (subscriber, #61675)
[Link] (2 responses)
The history of the work Mohr (moor) is a good example of how different languages and populations may see the same word in two completely different ways. Moor was in Latin and Gree a generic geographic adjective (coming from Mauritania, at the time equivalent with coming from North Africa). It then evolved to mean Arab person from North Africa (like Othello was). Finally, in all languages spoken in south and central Europe (Italian, Spanish, Germany), it further evolved to mean "dark tanned" or "with dark hair". Nowadays saying that somebody is "moro" (Italian) or "moreno" (Spanish) just indicate that their skin or their hair is dark, a judgment-neutral adjective like "swarthy" or "brunette".
However, in the 60s the German-speaking world started using the word "Mohr" with discriminatory intents and it is now treated similarly to "the N word" and rarely used.
Since I learned about this, I cannot stop asking myself: will one day German-speaking people ask Italian-speaking or Spanish-speaking people to stop using a word because in their language it is no longer acceptable?
Posted Jun 17, 2020 23:02 UTC (Wed)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (1 responses)
(And I've always thought of Moor (as in a person) as being an archaic word for some one from Northern Africa especially Morocco.)
Cheers,
Posted Jun 17, 2020 23:17 UTC (Wed)
by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325)
[Link]
- moor, meaning a bog or other infertile land, came from Old High German (muor) via Old English (mōr).
TL;DR: When in doubt, blame the French.
* https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/moor
Posted Jun 18, 2020 0:54 UTC (Thu)
by AdamW (subscriber, #48457)
[Link]
No, we should avoid "Führer". As, in fact, I have observed people tend to do, both inside and outside Germany, except when it's unavoidable in referring to Hitler in context. As Wikipedia puts it, "In Germany, the isolated word "Führer" is usually avoided in political contexts, due to its intimate connection with Nazi institutions and with Hitler personally."
The German word is and was widely used outside of Germany both at the time and since then - it was not translated as a capitalized "Leader" or anything like that.
If, say, a Jewish group were to say "we really find the word 'leader' uncomfortable because of this", that might be worth looking at. But AFAIK, none has. I suspect that if someone in a US political party decided to declare themselves its "Führer", though, folks would have something to say about *that*, and they'd be right.
Posted Jun 18, 2020 13:55 UTC (Thu)
by jschrod (subscriber, #1646)
[Link]
I would consider this a bad translation.
Nowadays, one would translate "leader" as "Anführer" oder "Anführerin", maybe as "Führungsperson", but not as "Führer". (Except, if the story is about the AFD Flügel, but that's the whole point of context and cultural sensitive translations.)
Posted Jun 19, 2020 7:44 UTC (Fri)
by jafd (subscriber, #129642)
[Link]
...while also bringing unsolicited associations with cults. Thanks but no thanks. (Or are you going to diminish the pain of people who had been in destructive cults and would like less of that bullshit in their lives? I mean the actual firsthand people living today, not even their great-grand-descendants.)
"Primary" and "replica", or "primary" and "standby", are more technical terms, more accurate, less anthropomorphic.
Posted Jun 17, 2020 19:43 UTC (Wed)
by sumanah (guest, #59891)
[Link]
Posted Jun 17, 2020 17:56 UTC (Wed)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link]
On the other hand, the terminology of "master branch" is a better fit, in the sense of "master record" (something that is used to stamp more records).
Posted Jun 17, 2020 18:11 UTC (Wed)
by halla (subscriber, #14185)
[Link]
Posted Jun 17, 2020 18:17 UTC (Wed)
by ermo (subscriber, #86690)
[Link]
If the proposed terminology changes lead to better, more descriptive names that convey the concept or concepts in question more clearly than before, so much the better. If there's progress in both the social dimension and the technical dimension, surely such changes will seem less forced and more likely to sway those of a ... erh ... deeply technical persuasion, since it represents genuine improvement, however small.
Posted Jun 17, 2020 18:27 UTC (Wed)
by clugstj (subscriber, #4020)
[Link] (2 responses)
(yes, this is sarcasm)
Posted Jul 3, 2020 12:03 UTC (Fri)
by N0NB (guest, #3407)
[Link] (1 responses)
Of course, I expect this to be hand waved away because reasons.
Posted Jul 3, 2020 16:58 UTC (Fri)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link]
Posted Jun 17, 2020 18:42 UTC (Wed)
by tux3 (subscriber, #101245)
[Link] (1 responses)
I think the parallel with the FSF is fair game; words are important. While we don't often spend the time to actively maintain and upgrade them, the main barrier is not technical.
My hope is that we can improve the situation in a sensible way, without over-correcting things that don't very much need correcting at all. We can do without the master-slave imagery. I'm not particularly fazed by "allowlist", silly as that change may seem to some, that word has the merit of making a lot of sense.
We pride ourselves on having empathy, on acknowledging that words can be uncomfortable, even if they don't affect us personally. I like to assume good faith in people, that they don't quite resist change for no reason at all. Silly as that may seem to some, unnecessary change can be uncomfortable too.
We can have our cake, and keep the red-black trees too, hmm?
Posted Jun 17, 2020 20:41 UTC (Wed)
by logang (subscriber, #127618)
[Link]
I disagree that the comparison is fair. Yes, words are important, and the FSF has every right to decide how to communicate *their* own message. Just as any software developer/community should be free to chose the words that best expresses the code they write.
What would not be fair is if the FSF decided that the word "alternative" is wrong and instead spread their message by hounding people who use the term, regardless of the context. ie. all the music journalists must stop using "alternative" to describe music because it might be offensive to the free software people. All this does is focus the conversation in the wrong place and causes unnecessary acrimonious debates over something that isn't really going improve anything.
I'm all for police reform, I can get behind affirmative action, and I'm open to any other ideas that might actually improve peoples lives. But a war on language has no hope to do that and is much more likely to alienate people than it is to get them to change their behaivour.
The PC principle that words and ideas need to be silenced, lest they might offend people, is simply wrong and was adeptly disputed in the book "The Coddling of the American Mind" by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt.
Posted Jun 17, 2020 19:00 UTC (Wed)
by wsy (subscriber, #121706)
[Link] (2 responses)
Enjoy freedom of speech when you can.
Posted Jun 18, 2020 0:55 UTC (Thu)
by AdamW (subscriber, #48457)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jun 22, 2020 13:28 UTC (Mon)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link]
Posted Jun 17, 2020 19:12 UTC (Wed)
by q_q_p_p (guest, #131113)
[Link] (54 responses)
Corporations were always authoritarian and replacing terminology in the tech they use will change nothing - it's like putting makeup* on a stalin or mao face just to please the communists.
This whole issue just shows, it's better to develop proprietary software just to avoid political crap.
* white of course, because blackface is racist too.
Posted Jun 17, 2020 19:24 UTC (Wed)
by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784)
[Link]
And developing proprietary software does not, in fact, avoid political crap, unless you're working in a very low-visibility field.
Posted Jun 17, 2020 20:22 UTC (Wed)
by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325)
[Link] (52 responses)
Do you honestly believe that proprietary software shops aren't having this exact same conversation? Because I can tell you from experience, they are. If you work in the software industry, this is a thing that is happening, like it or not. Your options are to engage with it in good faith, or allow others to make decisions without your involvement.
Posted Jun 18, 2020 4:23 UTC (Thu)
by Conan_Kudo (subscriber, #103240)
[Link] (51 responses)
Posted Jun 18, 2020 13:00 UTC (Thu)
by Rudd-O (guest, #61155)
[Link] (50 responses)
Go ahead, test that hypothesis.
(I know it from experience, just in case you were wondering.)
Posted Jun 18, 2020 22:12 UTC (Thu)
by Conan_Kudo (subscriber, #103240)
[Link]
Posted Jun 19, 2020 12:09 UTC (Fri)
by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
[Link] (48 responses)
I used to run a software company; some of our products were proprietary. I was asked by a customer to change "blacklist/whitelist" and after thinking about it, I decided to do it. It's not a matter of "Cult of Woke". It's simply the case of a very cheap change that makes at least one customer happier. It was a no-brainer.
Stubbornly refusing change when the change (1) is easy, (2) will make some people happy and (3) will make nobody less happy is just dumb, in my opinion.
Posted Jun 19, 2020 12:28 UTC (Fri)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
Cheers,
Posted Jun 20, 2020 2:35 UTC (Sat)
by milesrout (subscriber, #126894)
[Link] (45 responses)
Well firstly change is not easy. 'master' as a git branch is embedded quite tightly into my muscle memory, as with many others out there. It's also baked into a lot of tools, tutorials, blog posts, articles, etc.
Secondly, it doesn't actually make anyone happy. If they're unhappy about this terminology they'll keep finding things to be unhappy about.
To people are think they care about this terminology: if you are upset and angry about American police violence (which we all are), changing the name of git's master branch is not going to make you any less upset or angry. It's not going to solve any of the issues that really are making you angry. It might make you feel a little better for a bit, but the underlying issues are still there, and you'll just try to replicate feeling a little better temporarily through the same mechanism: getting some other 'problematic' language changed.
That's the problem. They'll never be sated. In a couple of years another completely innocent term will be renamed. Maybe it'll be the term 'tree' because it conjures up mental imagery of lynchings or something. And the same people will say the same thing: it isn't hard to change, it makes some people happier, and it doesn't really negatively affect anyone, so why not?
Well the answer is this: it *does* make people less happy. It makes me significantly less happy to see our language eroded by creating associations for terms that have no reason to exist. 'master' *is not racist*. It *is not* problematic. It just *isn't*. I like the term. It's in my muscle memory, it is widely used in a lot of contexts that have nothing to do with slavery (Remastered albums/games/films, 'Master.' as a title for boys, Masters Degree, git push origin master, Headmaster of a school, etc.).
I find it highly offensive that people want to change the word and then label anyone that refuses to go along with the change as a racist.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 12:25 UTC (Sat)
by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
[Link] (6 responses)
> They'll never be sated. In a couple of years another completely innocent term will be renamed.
Yes, as long as the underlying behaviors still exist, new words will get re-appropriated for abhorrent behavior and sentiments. That doesn't mean the words that have negative connotations don't have baggage associated with them.
This is analogous to saying "we're not going to remove your tumor because it may come back elsewhere tomorrow".
> It's also baked into a lot of tools, tutorials, blog posts, articles, etc.
Tools which assume "master" is "special" are already broken. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, tutorials will have to be updated for the "git checkout" replacements anyways as tutorials naturally bitrot just like code too. Now we finally have a way to ask what it is (`core.defaultBranchName`) instead of having to parse out `symbolic-ref` or `ls-remote` output.
> I find it highly offensive that people want to change the word and then label anyone that refuses to go along with the change as a racist.
You know, it's patterns of comments like yours in this thread which tend to give off vibes that there's something…more underlying your reticence to these kinds of things more than "refusal to go along" on its own. I don't know if the repos I work on day-to-day are going to rename their "master" branches as that's a migration that requires some consideration in various tools and workflows in use on each specific project. What I can do is make sure my code isn't assuming anything about branch names (which it shouldn't have done anyways). Those changes also happen to make any decision to migrate repositories away from the "master" branch name easier too.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 16:00 UTC (Sat)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link] (4 responses)
People used to assume bleeding had a healing effect.
Sick? Let’s bleed you some. Still sick? Let’s bleed you some more. Dead? The medicine worked, you’re not sick anymore!
Sometimes you need to address the root causes not pile layer over layer of feel-good posturing that is never as side-effect-free as the feel-good proponents assume.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 17:02 UTC (Sat)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link] (3 responses)
The thing is.. for some conditions, it actually does -- and thanks to natural selection, this condition is quite common in those of European descent.
Basically, semi-regular bloodletting is a way of getting rid of excess iron in the body. If left to accumulate, it can cause some serious liver issues, on top of making folks more susceptible to certain cancers, heart arrhythmia, and diabetes.
Why was this condition selected for, rather than selected out? Because high iron levels also made one more resistant to the Black Plague.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 17:21 UTC (Sat)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link] (2 responses)
Or more precisely, those whose bodies were better at absorbing/sequestering iron meant that there was less much iron available for the bacterium that caused the Plague.
Sure, it caused problems later in life, but to get to that "later in life" period one had to first survive the Plague..
Posted Jun 20, 2020 20:04 UTC (Sat)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (1 responses)
People who were good at sequestering iron (in the lymph glands) were OVERLY vulnerable because the bacterium targeted the iron in the glands. Hence bubonic plague, the lymph glands swelled and went black (ie became bubos).
And actually, they think it should actually be called *pneu*monic plague, because it must have been spread by aerosol, not rat fleas; and because there are no known illustrations of victims, they think that most of them didn't actually have bubos (plague was spread by rat fleas, but it was not the typical mode of transmission).
Cheers,
Posted Jun 20, 2020 21:27 UTC (Sat)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link]
But here's a good lay-summary of how hemochromatosis helped give a leg-up over the plague:
http://biologicalexceptions.blogspot.com/2016/05/ironing-...
Posted Jun 21, 2020 1:47 UTC (Sun)
by milesrout (subscriber, #126894)
[Link]
Keep some perspective on this please. None of these terms have been 'appropriated for abhorrent behavio[u]r [or] sentiments'. And words do not have negative connotations *in and of themselves* but connotations as a function of context.
To take a really extreme example, in American culture the N word has massively negative connotations in most circumstances, but is also used very casually with no negative connotations by some black people. Context matters.
'Master' and 'blacklist' do not have negative connotations in and of themselves, and certainly not in the contexts of `git push origin master` or 'device blacklist'.
> This is analogous to saying "we're not going to remove your tumor because it may come back elsewhere tomorrow".
It's analogous to saying "we're not going to remove this benign lump because it's pointless and all surgery is dangerous and can have side-effects".
This language is doing no harm. Removing it does harm.
> Tools which assume "master" is "special" are already broken.
No they aren't. The initially created default branch in git is not configurable and so it's not unreasonable to assume that the first branch created in any new git repo will be 'master'. Not every tool is expected to work with every possible git repository.
>As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, tutorials will have to be updated for the "git checkout" replacements anyways as tutorials naturally bitrot just like code too.
git checkout will continue to work and everyone using git today managed to work it out fine without too much confusion, so I doubt that it will cause any real angst if the tutorials aren't updated immediately. The newer commands are more intuitive for newer users but the old ones will still work and still are teachable.
>You know, it's patterns of comments like yours in this thread which tend to give off vibes that there's something…more underlying your reticence to these kinds of things more than "refusal to go along" on its own.
You're making my point for me. You are unable to have a conversation about this issue where there's the possibility that you might not "win". If people go along with what you want, you pat yourself on the back for a job well done. If they don't, you accuse them of having malicious intent. You refuse to allow the possibility that people can disagree with you without having some underlying evil motive. I disagree with you because what you're doing is poisonous, pretentious, and pointless and for no other reason.
The worst thing is that by making these sorts of accusations you're pushing people away from your camp and ironically making it much more likely they'll be pushed away towards the alt-right kind of viewpoint. Imagine someone's first exposure to social justice is this kind of stuff. They're just going to think it's a bunch of loons trying to police people's language instead of doing something useful. Now I know that there's more to social justice than internet language policing. But does everyone?
Posted Jun 20, 2020 14:52 UTC (Sat)
by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
[Link] (31 responses)
In the git case, maybe the change isn't easy. I'll grant you that.
Secondly, it doesn't actually make anyone happy. If they're unhappy about this terminology they'll keep finding things to be unhappy about.
Oh, wow. So you feel qualified to speak for everyone else?
That's the problem. They'll never be sated.
You're right, because there will always be injustice in this world. So does that mean we just give up and don't bother making even small changes to make things slightly better? It's not a zero-sum game; changing terms that bother some people doesn't impair the larger fight against injustice.
Well the answer is this: it *does* make people less happy.
In that case, we need to balance the net change in happiness, and I strongly suspect that the increase in happiness from changing the terms outweighs the decrease in happiness from people who don't want to change the terms.
I find it highly offensive that people want to change the word and then label anyone that refuses to go along with the change as a racist.
I would never call someone who doesn't want to change "master" a racist. That position alone is certainly not racist, but it is IMO stubborn and somewhat insensitive.
Posted Jun 21, 2020 1:32 UTC (Sun)
by milesrout (subscriber, #126894)
[Link] (30 responses)
I'm not speaking for them, merely stating my opinion based on observation past and present. And yes, I think it is okay to say that. I do not think there's any reasonable way to justify a claim that it makes people *happy* to do something like this. It doesn't make sense for it to be something that makes people happy. Temporarily relief from anger and upset? Sure.
>You're right, because there will always be injustice in this world. So does that mean we just give up and don't bother making even small changes to make things slightly better? It's not a zero-sum game; changing terms that bother some people doesn't impair the larger fight against injustice.
This is wrong in two main respects.
Firstly, there's a limited amount of effort available on the part of the people that want to make these changes. Now far be it from me to tell them how to accomplish their goals well, but it seems to me that the people that are pushing for these changes are not actually doing anything truly useful. So to suggest things along the lines of "we can do both, you know" really doesn't seem to have any basis in evidence. Either 1) you really can't do both, doing one consumes enough time and energy that you don't have any left to do the other, or 2) the people involved in this are doing it because they're incapable or unwilling to pursue *real* change and so are left trying to pursue something that looks like change for 'social justice' but is actually ineffective terminological nitpicking.
The second thing is that this sort of effort really does impair the larger fight for injustice. It puts people off that would otherwise be on your side 100%. I totally believe in social justice. I think that the current situation in America, especially w.r.t. the Police, is just appalling. It's unjust. If people were actually focusing on that, on a real issue that all agree is a real issue, there would no argument from me or people that, like me, don't feel this is effective or reasonable.
The problem is that by focusing on things like this (or 'RuboCop' - oh no a Ruby linter with 'Cop' in the name??? how terrible! not joking there was genuinely a big internet fight over that too) you turn off people that would otherwise be fully on your side. You create animosity. I would struggle to sit down and have a productive conversation about an issue I really agreed with someone on (like police violence in American not being in an okay place) if that person had just spent the last week telling me I'm insensitive or a racist for having a git branch called 'master'.
>In that case, we need to balance the net change in happiness, and I strongly suspect that the increase in happiness from changing the terms outweighs the decrease in happiness from people who don't want to change the terms.
The problem with this idea is that it's central planning, basically the economic calculation problem. Maybe Rice's Theorem is a better analogy. Either way, the idea that you can calculate or even estimate the 'net change in happiness' of something like this is naive.
One thing I think you're not taking into account is that the whole issue itself, all the discussion around it, all the arguments, the name-calling, etc. is itself a source of significant unhappiness. The future animosity it will generate when people create 'Please change your default branch name to main' issues on issue trackers and it's declined. All the evidence I can see around me in this thread and in every other forum or group I've seen is that discussing this kind of stuff leaves permanent scars in a community and this kind of issue hovering around forever has a negative impact on communities.
Trying to make this an issue has created far more unhappiness than it is supposedly attempting to get rid ofit, and even if it does get rid of some unhappiness, how much of that unhappiness was created by the issue? *And* there's the issue that framing has a big impact on how people see things. A lot of people just never thought about master and it never had any negative or 'problematic' connotation, and now they have negative associations with the word simply because it's been framed as problematic or negative over and over again.
>I would never call someone who doesn't want to change "master" a racist. That position alone is certainly not racist, but it is IMO stubborn and somewhat insensitive.
Stubbornness is a sin and a virtue. While sometimes one can be stubborn to a fault, I think a bit of stubbornness is valuable because it makes people really justify stuff like this. And when pushed a little, they really admit what they think. Let me quote someone else in the thread:
>By removing non-problematic uses from these terms, you ensure that they're only used in order to be problematic. That, in turn, means that the genuinely problematic uses can't hide behind reasonable uses and say that they don't "mean" to be offensive, they're just using "standard" terms. And then, finally, this means that we can separate out and handle the people who genuinely believe that acting on racism etc is good behaviour, because they're the ones continuing to refer to things like master/slave, or blacklisting.
In other words, they *know* that the usage of [word] is not problematic at all, but are trying to pull back usage of the term so that they can call anyone that's still using [word] can be labelled as [bad thing]. This isn't just racism, it happens all over. It's language policing. 'Master' is not a *slur*. 'Slave' is not a *slur*. Slavery is much wider and broader as an institution in history and today than the racial slavery of the United States. If all slavery in history were racial slavery I could understand someone claiming it's a racist term but it just isn't and that's a fact.
Posted Jun 21, 2020 13:42 UTC (Sun)
by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
[Link] (29 responses)
It doesn't make sense for it to be something that makes people happy.
When we made the change in our software, the customer who requested it was happy, as were a handful of other people who contacted us after we made the change. Nobody expressed unhappiness.
...the people that are pushing for these changes are not actually doing anything truly useful.
So the opinions of those people who ask for the change don't count? Plenty of people consider the changes very useful.
The second thing is that this sort of effort really does impair the larger fight for injustice.
Nonsense. Call me cynical, but I strongly suspect people who are upset by changes to language to make it more inclusive are highly unlikely to participate in larger fights against injustice. Changing the language is not going to turn people off who would otherwise fight injustice, and if it does, then their commitment to justice was tenuous at best to begin with.
The problem with this idea is that it's central planning, basically the economic calculation problem.
Again, nonsense. We're talking about free software here. It is literally the antithesis of central planning. If you object to language changes in a piece of free software, fork it! If enough people agree with you, great! The fork will thrive.
What's really going on here is that society is changing in ways that make some people uncomfortable. There's no conspiracy or central planning going on; it's just that attitudes are changing and you have to deal with it. Ten years from now, people are going to wonder what all the fuss was about, just as nobody questions women's suffrage or legality of interracial marriage or any of countless issues that were hugely controversial at the time but are now widely considered to be settled.
Trying to make this an issue has created far more unhappiness than it is supposedly attempting to get rid of
Raising difficult points is difficult. Do you rather advocate that people just stay silent? That is not a position likely to lead to long-term harmony.
Posted Jun 21, 2020 21:53 UTC (Sun)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (23 responses)
> Nonsense. Call me cynical, but I strongly suspect people who are upset by changes to language to make it more inclusive are highly unlikely to participate in larger fights against injustice. Changing the language is not going to turn people off who would otherwise fight injustice, and if it does, then their commitment to justice was tenuous at best to begin with.
Call me cynical, and yes I agree with you that the people who are upset by changes to the language are unlikely to participate in larger fights (because you're describing me), but I'm cynical in that I strongly suspect said changes will achieve pretty much nothing.
Plus, I'm strongly upset by *American* angst messing about with the *English* language ... if they were messing about with their *own* language I would be far less concerned ... ;-)
Cheers,
Posted Jun 21, 2020 22:26 UTC (Sun)
by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
[Link] (18 responses)
I don't understand the rationale here. English is spoken in many countries and over time, variations have developed including in India (not talking about accent) and there are now considerable number of words originating from the country (ex: Guru) which have caught on and some (ex: prepone, one of my favourite words) which haven't. This is just the nature of language. A lot of the spread of the language could be attributed to colonization efforts. If you want to claim unique control of language while colonizing countries and making sure locals learned your language, there is a wee bit of hypocrisy there.
Posted Jun 22, 2020 0:14 UTC (Mon)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (17 responses)
In Germany they speak German. In France they speak French. I don't know where you're from, but if you're Nepalese you speak Nepalese ... it's absolutely fine if the Indians have their own variation(s), just don't call it simply "English" and confuse it with what the English speak.
I'm from England. I speak English. I do *NOT* speak American. And I wish the Americans had enough national pride and decency to call their language "American" and not try to steal ours !!!
The Australians have the decency to call their version of the language Strine, precisely because it is NOT what the English speak - why can't the Americans do similar? The Canadians prefix their laguages with the word "Canadian" ... why aren't the English allowed to call their language simply "English"?
To give you a simple example of the problems it causes - taking this very concept of blackness as my example - is that in *English* the word "Black" is just a normal acceptable description for black people. In America, adding another national description to "American" indicates ethnicity, so Irish American, Italian American, African American is perfectly acceptable. But in Britain, it implies political allegiance, so African Briton is an accusation of treachery.
American attempts to redefine their language have a real detrimental impact on ours, and if they had the national pride to have their *own* language, it would go a large way to fixing that.
Cheers,
Posted Jun 22, 2020 0:26 UTC (Mon)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (16 responses)
The reason that English is spoken outside English is that the English turned up, murdered a bunch of the existing inhabitants and then forced the remainder to speak English if they wanted to be able to function in the society that was imposed upon them. I'm sure a lot of people would prefer that the English hadn't stolen their languages sufficiently violently that, in some cases, those languages no longer exist. In any case, American cultural domination is sufficiently strong that Americanisms are already significantly more acceptable in the UK than they were when I was a kid - don't wish too hard, or some day you might find that the country speaks American instead of English.
Posted Jun 22, 2020 1:47 UTC (Mon)
by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
[Link] (2 responses)
The hypocrisy isn't that. The hypocrisy is not acknowledging the violent colonization that resulted in the spread of the language in the first place
Even without this history, wanting control of a language is a futile effort. Even my own native tongue is spoken in several different countries and each have their own unique distinct dialects. I have zero say in that. Also my language has morphed into a completely different language just in my neighbouring state over a few centuries and again, I have zero say in that. Going around claiming that the way I speak or write it is the way that language is the only way the entire world should do is just ignoring the basic fact that language spreads and evolves in interesting ways and always will.
Even within a country if enough people misuse a word, the dictionaries will just acknowledge it as a common pattern (ex: using literally to mean figuratively). Fact of life.
Posted Jun 22, 2020 15:34 UTC (Mon)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (1 responses)
> The hypocrisy isn't that. The hypocrisy is not acknowledging the violent colonization that resulted in the spread of the language in the first place
WHAT violent colonisation? For the record, America is SLAVishly following the "UK Imperial Howto" (yes I used that word), and we didn't invent it, we merely copied the Romans. Oh - and it's widely recognised that as Imperial Expansions go, the British one was remarkably NON-violent.
Also, for the record, me personally part of my family fled Germany, another part were probably victims to The Clearances, etc etc. For heavens sake, it's all history! I have a Saxon name, Norman persecution is STILL visible if you know how to look ...
All *I* said was "why can't the Americans have some national pride", and everybody starts dragging British Imperialism into it. For **** sake stop acting like a teenager and grow up! America claims to be a Free Country and a Champion of Democracy - as the rest of the world see them they are a Police State (as in the Police ignore the law because they EXPECT to get away with it), and they most definitely are not a modern democracy seeing as large slabs of the citizenry are routinely denied the opportunity to vote!
Take PRIDE in being a Free Country - demand that the Police are held accountable for their crimes!
And stop exporting your propaganda about how nice you are when you quite blatantly aren't! LIVE UP TO YOUR OWN CONSTITUTION!
I don't think I ought to drag IP (mis)behaviour into this ... but America are widely seen as the bully saying "do as I say, not as I do". Fix that, and respect for America will grow. But until America gains some self-respect of their own, I doubt they'll be able to fix it!
Cheers,
Posted Jun 22, 2020 15:49 UTC (Mon)
by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
[Link]
All of it. English language was introduced in many countries via that British empire which inevitably included violent intrusions and massacres of the native population including deaths of many sub cultures and local languages
Posted Jun 22, 2020 5:04 UTC (Mon)
by milesrout (subscriber, #126894)
[Link] (12 responses)
I think most people today would rather live in modern societies with modern technology and medicine while speaking English than live in a stone age society where a small cut being infected could lead to death, speaking the language their ancestors spoke.
Posted Jun 22, 2020 8:22 UTC (Mon)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (11 responses)
I think most people today would have preferred that their culture and population not be wiped out in the process of sharing knowledge.
Posted Jun 22, 2020 8:59 UTC (Mon)
by milesrout (subscriber, #126894)
[Link] (8 responses)
I think that Americans should stick to language policing themselves and stop trying to tell other people not to use words they've unilaterally deemed 'problematic', especially given that they are doing so because they simply don't understand etymology, context or nuance. If they want to have their culture wars then let them have them, but can they stick to having them with each other? I'm sick of hearing about them.
And for what it's worth, I do think that the net effect of colonialism on the native people of New Zealand was still positive in the case of New Zealand, at least. Ireland would be an independent, advanced European country today with or without British colonialism. New Zealand? Doubtful. Long way away from anywhere and technologically very primitive when first contacted by Europeans. It would at best be a poor developing country.
Posted Jun 22, 2020 9:11 UTC (Mon)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (7 responses)
Posted Jun 22, 2020 10:14 UTC (Mon)
by milesrout (subscriber, #126894)
[Link] (6 responses)
I mean really, who a couple of months ago could have predicted people would be asked to change the name of their repository because it had 'cop' in it... absurd
Posted Jun 22, 2020 11:18 UTC (Mon)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link]
That’s were this whole insanity is directly leading to.
Posted Jun 22, 2020 16:26 UTC (Mon)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jun 22, 2020 16:28 UTC (Mon)
by milesrout (subscriber, #126894)
[Link]
Posted Jun 22, 2020 16:35 UTC (Mon)
by amacater (subscriber, #790)
[Link]
Posted Jun 22, 2020 19:45 UTC (Mon)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (1 responses)
But you've made it pretty clear that you're opposed to that as well.
Posted Jun 22, 2020 20:49 UTC (Mon)
by milesrout (subscriber, #126894)
[Link]
If one stupid change was made but that was the whole issue that would be fine. But it won't be one change. It will be a long series of stupid changes. If we let this one happen then they'll just move on to the next like cop or blacklist
Posted Jun 22, 2020 15:45 UTC (Mon)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (1 responses)
I think you'll find that other nations were typically FAR worse than the British. What about the Spaniards in South America? I'm not condoning it but the North American Indians got away with it FAR more lightly.
The Indians? Well, they've still got most of their culture - modified, but it happens. The Indo-Chinese? likewise. The Australasians well yes they had a rough time too. The Falklanders? Well, actually, the British WERE the aboriginal settlers until the Argentinians decided they wanted to be a bunch of Imperialists!
And look at what happened to the Britons! Our alleged victims got off a lot more lightly than we did! The Angles, Saxons, Vikings, Danes did their best to ethnically cleanse the place. The Normans simply trampled the place.
FFS, it's HISTORY. You can't judge yesterday by the standards of today. And don't damn people for being people of their day - ESPECIALLY when, by today's standards, they were a lot more civilised than their contempories and predecessors.
Cheers,
Posted Jun 22, 2020 19:41 UTC (Mon)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link]
And? "Sorry we murdered most of you and deprived those that remained of your culture, but we could have been even worse" isn't a justification.
Posted Jun 21, 2020 22:44 UTC (Sun)
by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
[Link] (3 responses)
I'm cynical in that I strongly suspect said changes will achieve pretty much nothing.
I agree. On the other had, they do no harm, they do some small amount of good, and they are easy to do. So why not take care of the low-hanging fruit while fully recognizing that there's still much more to do.
Plus, I'm strongly upset by *American* angst messing about with the *English* language
That sentiment is very un-English; it's more worthy of the Academie française or similar. English is a wild, freely-evolving language with no central control, and it's all the better for that.
Posted Jun 22, 2020 0:18 UTC (Mon)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (2 responses)
The quicker it goes down the path of Latin and becomes like Italian/Spanish/Portuguese(/Romanian/etc) - several mutually comprehensible versions of the same root language which all have the decency to have their own name, the better!
Cheers,
Posted Jun 22, 2020 18:15 UTC (Mon)
by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
[Link]
In the past, English might have split into two languages, but given modern telecommunications, I suspect that's unlikely. You're stuck with the awful language of the ex-colonies.
Posted Jun 23, 2020 11:54 UTC (Tue)
by jezuch (subscriber, #52988)
[Link]
Anyway, English is not yours anymore and you have no right to dictate how other peoples use it. If it has ever actually been yours. A living language is much like free software - if you don't like the direction it's going in, you can fork it. But then you can't complain that nobody understands you when you speak The One True English.
Posted Jun 22, 2020 5:02 UTC (Mon)
by milesrout (subscriber, #126894)
[Link] (4 responses)
No, they weren't. I can absolutely guarantee they were not. They were temporarily satisfied. Nobody is *happy* about not using language they've convinced themselves is offensive. It's like being 'happy' you didn't get murdered today. It's not a good thing, it's just temporary relief from a bad thing. Except here it's not *actually* a bad thing, like getting murdered, but something you've convinced yourself - or have been convinced - is a bad thing through repeated conditioning.
>So the opinions of those people who ask for the change don't count? Plenty of people consider the changes very useful.
Opinions have nothing to do with it. It's demonstrably not useful. If that's an opinion or not doesn't really matter. I'm entitled to state my view that it is not useful, it's part of the basis of my argument, I've justified why I see it that way and I am happy to discuss it. Simply saying that other people disagree is completely useless as a discussion point. Quite clearly we both already know some people think it's useful or they wouldn't be doing it. What I'm saying is that it isn't useful. I'm happy to go into excruciating detail about why it isn't useful, if you would like me to, but I think that I've already explained it quite thoroughly before, so I wonder if you'll even read it if I do.
>Nonsense. Call me cynical, but I strongly suspect people who are upset by changes to language to make it more inclusive are highly unlikely to participate in larger fights against injustice. Changing the language is not going to turn people off who would otherwise fight injustice,
They're not changing language 'to be more inclusive'. I've already explained why they've done it. If you're not going to read my comments, don't reply to them.
And yes, changing language *absolutely* does, quite objectively, turn off people who would otherwise be on their side. I know several people personally that sympathise with a lot of the real issues but just cannot stand being around or dealing with the ardent keyboard warriors that make perfect the enemy of good and campaign hard for stuff like this that really really does not matter or positively benefit anyone.
> and if it does, then their commitment to justice was tenuous at best to begin with.
Why would one's commitment to justice be 'tenuous at best' just because you aren't interested in this issue? This isn't an issue of justice. It has nothing to do with justice, social or otherwise. It's purposeless language policing by people that do not understand or appreciate language or etymology or context. It is not social justice and it is not on the agenda of everyone that cares about social justice.
Here, again, you demonstrate the problem. If one does not agree with _everything_ that you stand for, then one is your _enemy_ and not _actually_ interested in justice. Ironically, for someone that professes to be inclusive and claims to want to change language to be inclusive, you're actually not being inclusive _at all_.
>Again, nonsense. We're talking about free software here. It is literally the antithesis of central planning. If you object to language changes in a piece of free software, fork it! If enough people agree with you, great! The fork will thrive.
We're not talking about free software at all, we're talking about language. And you've totally misunderstood what I said. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. I'll explain again. You talk of needing to 'balance the net change in happiness'. You cannot do this, because you cannot calculate the net change in happiness. The only way your view would make any sense is if you assume that, as long as you optimise for _your_ happiness, the world will move towards a position where everyone is happy. That's not the case!
You might _think_ that you are advancing your long term happiness by advocating for this, but I don't think you are, as I have explained. And I definitely do not agree that the long term happiness of everyone is best optimised by forking everything so that nobody has to deal with or talk to anyone that don't agree on literally everything with.
>What's really going on here is that society is changing in ways that make some people uncomfortable. There's no conspiracy or central planning going on; it's just that attitudes are changing and you have to deal with it. Ten years from now, people are going to wonder what all the fuss was about, just as nobody questions women's suffrage or legality of interracial marriage or any of countless issues that were hugely controversial at the time but are now widely considered to be settled.
Okay you really, really don't understand what I'm talking about at all. 'Central planning' was in reference to you talking about wanting to strike a balance between making some happy with making others unhappy. I said that that is akin to the economic calculation problem. I didn't say there was some fucking conspiracy. You really need to learn to read things properly if you want to discuss them online.
Tens years from now people are going to think the same thing we thought ten years ago: holy shit why don't these SJWs focus on something that actually matters. Of course, now we've had ten years to answer that question and the answer is: because they want to control others and label everyone that doesn't agree with them as evil bad people.
Legality of interracial marriage or women's suffrage are, to be quite frank, utterly stupid examples. Are you really, genuinely, saying you think that this is anything like those issues? Those were about rights, people's rights to do things and participate in society. This is about you trying to control the language of others because you don't understand etymology. They're utterly, totally different.
>Raising difficult points is difficult. Do you rather advocate that people just stay silent? That is not a position likely to lead to long-term harmony.
Raising this has caused more harm than not raising it, not just in the short term but in the long term too, as I explained quite clearly. What part of it did you not understand? I can explain it again differently if that would help.
Posted Jun 22, 2020 18:23 UTC (Mon)
by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
[Link] (3 responses)
No, they weren't. I can absolutely guarantee they were not
Wow. You don't know who I am, what my company was, what the software was, or who the client was and you "absolutely guarantee" that? You have very little credibility here.
It's demonstrably not useful.
Making a customer happier is IMO demonstrably useful. Making terms more precise and accurate is demonstrably useful. Showing sensitivity to others' feelings is IMO demonstrably useful.
If one does not agree with _everything_ that you stand for, then one is your _enemy_ and not _actually_ interested in justice.
You are making things up. I never called anyone my enemy. I simply said that in my experience, people who object to changing language to make it more inclusive are also unlikely to do more to address the issues the language change addresses, and that if changing technical terms puts someone off addressing those issues, then they likely had only a tenuous interest in those issues to begin with. You're the one heading off into hyperbole.
You cannot do this, because you cannot calculate the net change in happiness.
Of course. So you have to make your best estimate. My best estimate is that making language more inclusive leads to a net increase in happiness. If you disagree, then wrt to free software, you are perfectly free to fork the software according to your estimate of happiness increase.
Anyway, I don't think there's any point in continuing this conversation. You seem to be getting upset and that is not a desired outcome. I wish you the best, but respectfully continue to disagree with you.
Posted Jun 22, 2020 20:42 UTC (Mon)
by milesrout (subscriber, #126894)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jun 22, 2020 20:46 UTC (Mon)
by corbet (editor, #1)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jun 22, 2020 20:56 UTC (Mon)
by milesrout (subscriber, #126894)
[Link]
Posted Jun 21, 2020 1:47 UTC (Sun)
by himi (subscriber, #340)
[Link] (5 responses)
You (and many people making the same kind of argument) like to phrase things this way:
At no point do you ever unpack what exactly you mean by that - who "they" are, exactly. The impression you give is that "they" are all the people who want things to change, as though that represents some kind of coherent grouping, rather than a collection of disparate people each with their own different issues that they're trying to address.
The descendants of slave trafficked Africans are (quite understandably) asking for terminology relating to the slave trade to be reconsidered. People who are suffering various kinds of discrimination because of their ethnicity are asking for terms like "blacklist" to be reconsidered (amongst many other changes - changing terminology is one of the /least/ of those changes). Women have asked that the usage of male terms as generics ("that all men are created equal") be reconsidered. Trans people are asking that the default assumption of binary gender is reconsidered. Historically the Jews have spent many years asking for the same kind of consideration, and for the most part have been granted those requests. We don't normally refer to the Roma as Gypsies for the same reasons, and in both cases we've (mostly) retired the use of derogatory language tied to those groups because it was clearly harmful (you don't hear the phrase "jew down" any more, nor is "gypped" common usage, and I hope I don't have to explain why that's a good thing).
Each of those groups have entirely reasonable justifications for their requests - they're not asking because they're weak spineless creatures who can't handle a bit of wordplay, they're asking because they're suffering actual harm. The fact that the world is apparently being besieged by similar requests doesn't demonstrate that everyone has suddenly become snowflakes, it demonstrates that there's a hell of a lot of this stuff out there, and the more people recognise that these things can be addressed, the more people are actually standing up and asking.
"They" may never be sated, because it's hard to know if we'll ever reach the kind of utopia that would leave everyone satisfied with everything, and until we reach that state there will always be people who desire change. But by the same token, why should people pretend to be satisfied when they're not? Why should people accept the status quo if it makes them unhappy? Why shouldn't they ask for changes to be made which might make them more satisfied with their lives?
Posted Jun 21, 2020 4:15 UTC (Sun)
by milesrout (subscriber, #126894)
[Link]
They are the people pushing for this change, obviously. The people that think they care about this terminology, that think it is important that it (this terminology) be changed. Who else would I be referring to? I didn't realise that I had to spell it (the meaning of the phrase) out every time. Pronouns are a linguistic universal, so I--obviously mistakenly--assumed that you'd understand my usage of them (pronouns).
If you'd like me to write out the referent of every pronoun I use (other than first and second person singular pronouns) in future, be sure to let me know. First and second person singular pronouns have such obvious referents even _you_ should be able to understand what they (the pronouns) mean without explanation. :)
>The descendants of slave trafficked Africans are (quite understandably) asking for terminology relating to the slave trade to be reconsidered.
This is incorrect.
Firstly, they're not the ones asking for this, white activists are.
Secondly, the terminology is not 'relating to the [Atlantic] slave trade'. 'Master/slave' is derived from its usage in relation to slavery as an institution in general, not specifically the instance of slavery that Americans are still hung up about because of the terrible inequality in America today. Slavery has existed everywhere, but because America refuses to make amends they're still much more hung up about it than elsewhere. Nobody is going on about Maori slavery or Norse slavery (thralldom) today. 'Master' has wide variety of meanings other than just its usage in the context of slavery, and even then see above. 'Blacklist' has literally nothing to do with race or the slave trade *at all*.
It's also not 'quite understandable' why they'd want terminology relating to the Atlantic slave trade to be reconsidered. I'm not offended or upset about terminology that relates to famines or blights or potatoes despite having Irish citizenship and a lot of Irish ancestry. It was a terrible time in history, but that doesn't mean I'm going to get upset about the term "resource starvation" for example. It's just ridiculous. It's in a totally different context.
>People who are suffering various kinds of discrimination because of their ethnicity are asking for terms like "blacklist" to be reconsidered (amongst many other changes - changing terminology is one of the /least/ of those changes).
'Blacklist' has literally nothing to do with race and never has had anything to do with race or racial discrimination. 'Black' is not a derogatory term or an offensive one.
>Women have asked that the usage of male terms as generics ("that all men are created equal") be reconsidered. Trans people are asking that the default assumption of binary gender is reconsidered.
Blatant derailing...
>Historically the Jews have spent many years asking for the same kind of consideration, and for the most part have been granted those requests. We don't normally refer to the Roma as Gypsies for the same reasons, and in both cases we've (mostly) retired the use of derogatory language tied to those groups because it was clearly harmful (you don't hear the phrase "jew down" any more, nor is "gypped" common usage, and I hope I don't have to explain why that's a good thing).
'Gypsy' isn't universally considered derogatory. There are lots of gypsies that prefer to be known as gypsies, especially common amongst the ones *that aren't Roma*.
'Gypped' is derogatory because it plays on an association between gypsies and stealing, underhandedness, cheating, etc. It comes from the term 'gypsy' as referring to the groups of people known under that term. On the other hand, 'blacklist' has nothing to do with black people. It isn't a racial term or one that has its origin in racial stereotyping or anything like that.
So no, 'gypped' and 'blacklist' are not comparable at all sorry.
>Each of those groups have entirely reasonable justifications for their requests - they're not asking because they're weak spineless creatures who can't handle a bit of wordplay, they're asking because they're suffering actual harm. The fact that the world is apparently being besieged by similar requests doesn't demonstrate that everyone has suddenly become snowflakes, it demonstrates that there's a hell of a lot of this stuff out there, and the more people recognise that these things can be addressed, the more people are actually standing up and asking.
>"They" may never be sated, because it's hard to know if we'll ever reach the kind of utopia that would leave everyone satisfied with everything, and until we reach that state there will always be people who desire change. But by the same token, why should people pretend to be satisfied when they're not? Why should people accept the status quo if it makes them unhappy? Why shouldn't they ask for changes to be made which might make them more satisfied with their lives?
Gypsies are suffering harm when they're associated by proxy with stealing and stereotyped in that way. Black people aren't being harmed by a 'master' branch or 'device blacklist' at all.
The problem is that there is no actual problem here to be solved because it's an ever-expanding pool of things that are now 'offensive' for no reason. Now it's 'master' next it will be 'resource starvation', abort(3), kill(1), orphan processes, or something else. No more 'black pepper' and 'white pepper'.
And the problem, as I have said, with this, is that it doesn't accomplish anything. It's like smoking. It might temporarily relieve stress but really it's *creating* stress by creating these strong negative associations. If you are in the social justice movement for long enough you find yourself automatically negatively reacting to words and ideas that are actually harmless. I realised I was feeling this and that's when I stepped away from that kind of stuff: the social justice language police train themselves to be offended and outraged by stuff and then they're outraged by it. It's psychologically addicting to be outraged. But it doesn't actually do anything or help anyone or make anyone's life any better.
Posted Jun 21, 2020 11:20 UTC (Sun)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (3 responses)
I'm sorry, I thought "man" *was* the gender-NEUTRAL version. Okay, that's a bit tongue-in-cheek, but the male version is wer-man, and the female version is wif-man. Which is why we have words like "mankind" - it really IS gender-neutral.
THAT is a big problem with all these demands to change the language - it'll simply drift and bring all the same problems back unless we do something about the underlying ATTITUDES that cause the problem.
Cheers,
Posted Jun 22, 2020 1:38 UTC (Mon)
by himi (subscriber, #340)
[Link] (2 responses)
Power structures have built-in mechanisms for self-perpetuating - you have to fight them to achieve change. For power structures on the scale of, say, systematic racism in the post-colonial world, or gender disparities basically everywhere, you have to fight really hard at every step of the way to get anywhere.
One of those self-perpetuating mechanisms is the language we use to express our ideas, and how it's allowed or encouraged to develop over time - changing the words we use changes the way that we think about things, as you've noted yourself in other posts. Language changes are in many ways just a small part of what need to happen, but /any/ large systemic change is made up of lots of small changes that add up - maybe in the end you don't need all of them to get where you want, but it's only with hindsight that you can have any idea of that: at the time, in the thick of it all, you fight whatever battles are in front of you and hope that it will all end well.
And this is a fight that's actually being /won/. People have drastically reduced their usage of "mankind", in case you hadn't noticed - "humanity" or "humankind" are more generally acceptable. Even inelegant and klunky terms like "councilperson" or "congressperson" and similar are gaining acceptance over "councilman" or whatever - change /is/ happening. The argument that "man" isn't an acceptable generic term is changing what people consider acceptable language, which is shifting people's attitudes about gender roles in society, which is contributing to the broader fight against gender disparity. Changing the language is part of changing attitudes, and they're both part of a much larger set of changes which will ultimately reshape society (and which has already reshaped society massively).
Posted Jun 22, 2020 10:29 UTC (Mon)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (1 responses)
And if you're into what words actually MEANT - etymology and all tthat - man *IS* gender-neutral. And if history follows the same pattern as before (no guarantee there) people will soon be screaming that using the word "humanity" or "humankind" is sexist, becuase it will have acquired male overtones just like man did.
Cheers,
Posted Jun 22, 2020 13:42 UTC (Mon)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link]
I don't know about you, but I'm no longer speaking proto-Indo-European nor even Old English.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 12:05 UTC (Sat)
by jafd (subscriber, #129642)
[Link]
Posted Jun 17, 2020 19:40 UTC (Wed)
by rweikusat2 (subscriber, #117920)
[Link] (6 responses)
Posted Jun 17, 2020 21:17 UTC (Wed)
by amk (subscriber, #19)
[Link] (1 responses)
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/... has a static array called "ata_device_blacklist", and it doesn't seem significant to change the name of this structure from "ata_device_blacklist" to "ata_device_denylist" or even "ata_buggy_device_list". I find the second new name is even clearer about the purpose of this variable. Similarly, "master/slave" is not more technically correct in any sense than "master/agent" or "controller/agent" or "primary/replica".
Posted Jun 17, 2020 21:41 UTC (Wed)
by rweikusat2 (subscriber, #117920)
[Link]
I consider your statement about how the meaning of the term «blacklist» is not relevant for uses of the term «blacklist» strikingly similar to that.
I'm not going to offer an opinion on what I think of this and I also won't serve as springboard for elaborating about what other people think of this any further.
Posted Jun 17, 2020 22:03 UTC (Wed)
by coogle (guest, #138507)
[Link] (2 responses)
Changing the word you use to reference something isn't re-writing history. There's a big difference between telling a story using different language, and telling a different story all together.
If one thing is true to this point, the history I was taught in school is NOT the actual history as it occurred -- just the parts someone else wanted me to know. Makes me ask myself who's actually be "repairing" history here.
Posted Jun 19, 2020 12:32 UTC (Fri)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (1 responses)
> Changing the word you use to reference something isn't re-writing history. There's a big difference between telling a story using different language, and telling a different story all together.
Thing is, IT HAS THAT EFFECT. I've been reading Pepys, and it's full of references to black women. How many people here know what Pepys actually meant (it took me quite a while to find out)?
Cheers,
Posted Jun 19, 2020 14:08 UTC (Fri)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link]
I do know what he meant - in that era, colour descriptions of people described their hair colour.
Posted Jun 21, 2020 4:27 UTC (Sun)
by flussence (guest, #85566)
[Link]
As you can see, it's a complete work of fiction and drawing any kind of parallels to the real world using it would be silly. But do tell us more about this clever gotcha you first heard on Slashdot circa 2001 and how it's somehow relevant to your point, which you haven't made.
Posted Jun 17, 2020 20:43 UTC (Wed)
by alan (guest, #4018)
[Link]
Posted Jun 17, 2020 21:03 UTC (Wed)
by Depereo (guest, #104565)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jun 18, 2020 1:24 UTC (Thu)
by shemminger (subscriber, #5739)
[Link] (1 responses)
The standards bodies have moved away from master/slave language over the years.
For example the current Link Aggregation protocol 802.1AX which supersedes the old "bonding" driver no longer uses master/slave anywhere in the standard.
Posted Jun 19, 2020 1:15 UTC (Fri)
by kjpye (subscriber, #81527)
[Link]
Posted Jun 18, 2020 1:33 UTC (Thu)
by shemminger (subscriber, #5739)
[Link] (1 responses)
For free software, IMHO it is the same thing. Fixing word choice is a case of being non-offensive where ever possible.
Posted Jun 18, 2020 7:03 UTC (Thu)
by chatcannon (subscriber, #122400)
[Link]
I think this is important. The vast majority of "master" / "slave" pairings in computer hardware and software are *cooperative* and thus nothing like a human master / slave relationship. When I read documentation that mentions "masters" and "slaves", I imagine a marketplace of IT security products designed to stop database slaves from running away from their masters, and an ecosystem of NGOs writing software to help stop your hardware from being captured and used as a slave.
Ironically, in the one case that is perhaps most similar to enslavement - a botnet C&C infrastructure and its infected bots, we don't use the "master" and "slave" terminology.
Posted Jun 18, 2020 6:28 UTC (Thu)
by epa (subscriber, #39769)
[Link] (20 responses)
Posted Jun 18, 2020 7:35 UTC (Thu)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (6 responses)
Posted Jun 18, 2020 8:12 UTC (Thu)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (1 responses)
Cheers,
Posted Jun 18, 2020 8:26 UTC (Thu)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link]
The neutral verb "to work" in Czech (also Ukrainian, Polish, Belorussian) is "pracovat", which actually related to the English word "practice".
Posted Jun 18, 2020 9:45 UTC (Thu)
by epa (subscriber, #39769)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jun 18, 2020 18:22 UTC (Thu)
by jezuch (subscriber, #52988)
[Link] (1 responses)
I'm not sure (an a Easter European) if I should be proud or enraged at this.
BTW, the probably folk etymology of "Słowianin" ("Slav") is that we were the people who knew how to use words ("słowa"), in contrast to our Germanic neighbours ("Niemcy") who were "mute" ("niemi").
Posted Jun 18, 2020 18:24 UTC (Thu)
by jezuch (subscriber, #52988)
[Link]
Posted Jun 18, 2020 15:17 UTC (Thu)
by NAR (subscriber, #1313)
[Link]
Posted Jun 18, 2020 13:06 UTC (Thu)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link] (9 responses)
And if you think that is irrelevant ancient history well, people are not dying in Ukraine right now because of some people’s idea of where (western) Europe ends and the (free to treat differently) barbarian states start.
The Nazis were very much aware of this history too, that’s very much where the whole Lebensraum idea comes from.
Posted Jun 18, 2020 13:24 UTC (Thu)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link] (8 responses)
That’s why Tolkien invented whole new languages in lockstep with new history (and, even then, could not avoid reusing all the things he knew about early Germanic and Anglo constructs).
Posted Jun 18, 2020 21:46 UTC (Thu)
by halla (subscriber, #14185)
[Link] (7 responses)
History (and linguistics) aren't funny stop-gaps every idiot can use to prove a point; these are academic disciplines you need to study before you can use them to make a point. If making a point is at all relevant. Because, neither discipline exists for the purpose of making points in discussions.
The discussion right now is now whether "slavs" are named "slavs" for whatever reason, but whether the societies, which, in all their differences, are spanning the globe and are converging, can go on perpetuating nineteenth century patterns of racism; that's the real fight.
But apart from that... Everything you said was wrong.
Posted Jun 18, 2020 23:08 UTC (Thu)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
Cheers,
Posted Jun 19, 2020 9:28 UTC (Fri)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link] (5 responses)
It’s real easy to define what the “real fight” is. That’s what racism is all about BTW, defining the “real” first-class humans, and those that do not matter.
Posted Jun 19, 2020 13:25 UTC (Fri)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (4 responses)
And as you can tell from what I say here - history as people believe it is rarely history as it happened. I didn't realise Crimea was Greek only maybe 200 years ago - someone pointed it out to me. Even in the British Isles we have great trouble with nationalism, despite most true Scots living in Ireland, Edinburgh was founded as the Anglish capital, not that long ago Southern Ireland was deeply loyal to the Union and Belfast was the hotbed of radical independence-seeking ...
Yesterday's history is forgotten, today's history is a fairy-tale, and tomorrow's history will be completely different.
Cheers,
Posted Jun 19, 2020 14:44 UTC (Fri)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link] (3 responses)
Many of its earliest cities are Greek colonies (I’m quite sure it was not empty land when the Greek came), that got subsumed in the Eastern Roman Empire (which took itself a definitely Greek orientation over time), converted to christian orthodoxy, got invaded by Tatar tribes with most of Kievian Rus’ (predecessor of Both Russia and Ukraine, ally of the Eastern Roman Empire) who made themselves vassals to the Ottoman Empire (destroyer of the Eastern Roman Empire) when infighting among Gengis Khan’s descendants mortally weakened Tatar/Mongol states, got invaded/liberated by the Russians with the rest of the former Kievian Rus’ space (mostly because the Tatars were in the habit of raiding their former Russian subject states, making it impossible to leave them alone for the Russians), fought over by the British and French as allies of the Ottoman Empire (which was occupying Greece at the time), leaving it part of the Russian Empire till it’s implosion during First Word War. Russian Empire who did found some major Crimean cities — the Tatars were not much on urbanism.
So is Crimea Greek ? Russian ? Ukrainian ? Turkish ? Italian ? Mongol ? You can argue all day round.
You won’t say that Marseilles is Greek, yet it was a Greek colony just like the Chersonese settlements back in the time.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 11:21 UTC (Sat)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link] (2 responses)
History resonates long and far and deeply. Colonial wrongs, while being deeply wrong (and remember that colonial states like Israël exist today) are part of this procees.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 13:50 UTC (Sat)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (1 responses)
Cheers,
Posted Jun 22, 2020 13:50 UTC (Mon)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link]
Of course, using the racists' arguments, the presence of a detectable genetic difference means that people from fifty miles away are *lesser beings* and oh wait I was born more than fifty miles away from where I'm living now oh dammit
Posted Jun 18, 2020 19:41 UTC (Thu)
by gioele (subscriber, #61675)
[Link]
Or "server" that literally means "slave". From the Latin "servus" (slave person), through "servire" (to be enslaved), to "serve" (be obedient to).
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/serve#etymolog...
Posted Jun 19, 2020 13:34 UTC (Fri)
by jafd (subscriber, #129642)
[Link] (1 responses)
It’s directly derived from “hard work” (n), but yeah fine whatevs gonna work for your pet narrative
Posted Jun 20, 2020 19:24 UTC (Sat)
by epa (subscriber, #39769)
[Link]
Posted Jun 18, 2020 7:01 UTC (Thu)
by vegard (subscriber, #52330)
[Link] (7 responses)
1. There are so many nuances to this topic that often get lost because we come from different cultures. I think it's important that we share our perspectives, not so that one group can impose their view on another, but so that we can see that the world looks different for somebody else.
For me, personally, the word "slave" has never been offensive. Having English as a second language means that a lot of technical terms ONLY (or primarily) have their technical connotations. For example, a "statement" is primarily something you find in programming languages, not something you get from your bank. If somebody says "garbage collection", I don't imagine a big truck with two guys standing at the back; to me, the phrase is strictly about reclaiming unused memory. The same is the case for words like master/slave or whitelist/blacklist. They are strictly technical terms.
If I force myself to look beyond these technical meanings, the thing that comes to mind first is not American slavery, since I am not American and American history was only a very small part of my education. I'm from Norway and in fact the Norwegian word for slave is "slave" as well, and what comes to my mind when I see/hear the word is a Viking slave, in English known as "thrall". We used to read books and watch movies about the Viking age, and being a much bigger part of my history education, this is the connotation for me.
There is no trace of Viking slavery in modern society, unlike American slavery in American society. You cannot tell (or guess) by looking at somebody that their ancestors were slaves. Moreover, nobody feels (or even knows) like slavery is part of their heritage. It's too long ago. Maybe there aren't even many survivors, I wouldn't know.
All that just to say that the discussion around sensitive language looks very silly from this (my) perspective.
2. It's also hard to take the sensitive language discussion seriously when the majority of participants clamoring for change are white and obviously not personally affected by the issue themselves. (I do recognise that there are many reasons why this would appear to be the case, among them: the proportion of white people in tech is much greater to start with, perhaps due to systemic racism, or black people being uncomfortable sharing their opinion exactly because of potential racially-grounded backlash, etc.)
Personal stories have a huge impact on me. If somebody says "my ancestors were slaves and I am reminded of this when I read kernel code", this is something that I can understand on a personal level and moreover something that I cannot discard as zealotry.
Therefore, I would say that we should lift up the voices of those who are actually affected, rather than pretend to be offended on behalf of somebody else. I'm not saying that white people should not fight for the rights of black people. I'm just saying that for those who are far removed from racial issues (like myself), it is far easier to get on board when you see/hear people talk about their own experience as opposed to only seeing second-hand white guilt.
3. This comment from Dan Williams (linked indirectly from the main article) had an impact on me:
> One way I think about this is consider we have our first ever Linux
(https://lwn.net/ml/netdev/CAPcyv4jr9F_0q4S-LSvHzJK7mamLW-...)
Trying to put myself in this position, or even just imagining myself giving a talk to an _American_ mixed-race audience and having to use the terms master/slave, gives me pause.
Posted Jun 18, 2020 7:21 UTC (Thu)
by mfuzzey (subscriber, #57966)
[Link] (3 responses)
Anyone who is capable of working in any technical domain using those words is surely more than capable of understanding that words are context sensitive and a git master branch has nothing to do with human slavery.
While I don't have any objection to avoiding some words in *new* contexts (where the mix of old and new ways of describing the same thing won't be confusing and there is no cost of change) I really don't think there is any sensible justification for changing *existing* usage.
And remember it's not just software. There are many many uses in electronics (MISO/MOSI in SPI bus for example) and mechanics such as master / slave brake cylinders in vehicles.
Actually helping victims by fighting real world modern slavery and racial discrimination is laudable and there are many ways of doing that by supporting the various organisations that are actually doing good work, demonstrating, contacting politicians etc. But changing a few words in a software project is just useless costly busywork.
Posted Jun 18, 2020 8:57 UTC (Thu)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link] (2 responses)
I notice you use a lot of loaded terms without support to justify telling people who are actively working on this particular change that they're wasting their time - "vanishingly small", "actually offended", "costly busywork".
This is free software - it's not as if we're drawing on a limited pool of people we can afford to pay for their time. If the people who care about use of language are willing to put the effort in to fix it, why shouldn't they be allowed to make a small improvement?
Note, too, that done well, this sort of change improves the clarity of the code for new developers; instead of having to guess that ata_device_blacklist is present because there exist devices whose spec non-compliance interacts badly with the Linux drivers, why not rename it to ata_device_buglist, so that it's now obvious that these entries are for buggy devices?
Personally, I don't see the problem with removing even tiny barriers to contribution - if a well-thought through change of terminology makes it slightly more likely that someone will contribute useful code, why shouldn't we permit someone to make that change?
Posted Jun 18, 2020 10:17 UTC (Thu)
by mfuzzey (subscriber, #57966)
[Link] (1 responses)
I wasn't *just* talking about free software but the entire technical field, hence my mention of electronics and mechanics too.
No one is saying they shouldn't be *allowed* to make such changes, just that they come with a cost that has to be traded against the benefit.
I don't just mean the time cost of the people doing the work which, as you say, is less important in free software (though, even if you aren't paying them directly there is still the opportunity cost of not doing other things) but rather the total cost to the entire ecosystem. For example if someone changes the name of git's "master" branch that could have have a lot of ripple on effects in terms of existing scripts and documentation that go far beyond the time needed by whoever makes the change (which is likely to be very small).
>Note, too, that done well, this sort of change improves the clarity of the code for new developers; instead of having to guess that ata_device_blacklist is present because there exist devices whose spec non-compliance interacts badly with the Linux drivers, why not rename it to ata_device_buglist, so that it's now obvious that these entries are for buggy devices?
I see nothing wrong with renaming something if it really improves clarity and if the side effects are contained. Though "blacklist" and "buglist" don't have the same meaning to me. A "blacklist" is a list of things that one has decided not to use, for any reason as in /etc/module.d/blacklist*, not necessarily due to them being buggy.
Changes internal to a single code base are far less problematic but "rgrep master /usr/include" turns up quite a few hits in public identifier names...
>Personally, I don't see the problem with removing even tiny barriers to contribution - if a well-thought through change of terminology makes it slightly more likely that someone will contribute useful code, why shouldn't we permit someone to make that change?
Again no one is being "forbidden" from doing anything.
Just that if the argument is "changing the name will attract more contributions" it has to be shown that there is a good chance that there *will* be more contributions and that those contributions outweigh the downsides (which may vary greatly depending on the change involved).
Posted Jun 18, 2020 11:28 UTC (Thu)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link]
All of what you're saying is general stuff that can be levied against any change - you are literally saying that all changes impose costs, and we need to consider those costs and who ends up paying them.
Why, though, are you speaking up about this particular change? Your comment history as indexed by Google does not show you as normally commenting on every single suggested change asking people to consider the cost/benefit ratio - what is different in your eyes about this particular change?
Posted Jun 18, 2020 8:16 UTC (Thu)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
Yet again, the English and the Americans are divided by a common language. As an ENGLISH speaker "garbage" (and "trash") make me think of America. We have dustbins and dustmen - I don't even think we have a phrase like "garbage collection", we have "dustbin day".
Cheers,
Posted Jun 18, 2020 18:38 UTC (Thu)
by jezuch (subscriber, #52988)
[Link]
Yes, and for the record I'm a little uncomfortable commenting on this issue just for this reason. But I'm not willing to be part of the silent majority, the silent acquiescence of millions.
Call it virtue signalling if you will.
Posted Jun 22, 2020 13:55 UTC (Mon)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link]
Posted Jun 18, 2020 9:31 UTC (Thu)
by cdamian (subscriber, #1271)
[Link] (5 responses)
Posted Jun 18, 2020 11:02 UTC (Thu)
by Taleel (subscriber, #10361)
[Link] (4 responses)
Posted Jun 18, 2020 11:03 UTC (Thu)
by cdamian (subscriber, #1271)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Jun 18, 2020 13:00 UTC (Thu)
by amk (subscriber, #19)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jun 18, 2020 13:17 UTC (Thu)
by corbet (editor, #1)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jun 18, 2020 13:31 UTC (Thu)
by cdamian (subscriber, #1271)
[Link]
Posted Jun 18, 2020 11:05 UTC (Thu)
by dottedmag (subscriber, #18590)
[Link] (1 responses)
Nowadays I can see using an anonymous account if I am to voice an unpopular opinion — there seems to be a dearth of due process online, so being able to completely dispose of an identity is the only way to keep the freedom of speech without being exposed to online pitchforks.
Posted Jun 18, 2020 12:31 UTC (Thu)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
Not accusing you especially, but there are far too many sock-puppets who, when you try and engage them in *logical* discussion about "what *are* the facts?", promptly start screaming "I BELIEVE XXX AND WHO ARE YOU TO ARGUE!".
In a technical forum such as this, sock-puppets and anonymous accounts without history are associated with "one true way" believers ...
Cheers,
Posted Jun 18, 2020 11:57 UTC (Thu)
by vane (guest, #138107)
[Link] (12 responses)
Posted Jun 19, 2020 3:20 UTC (Fri)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (11 responses)
Posted Jun 19, 2020 3:44 UTC (Fri)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (10 responses)
Posted Jun 19, 2020 13:46 UTC (Fri)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (9 responses)
Or is it - like the Swastika - a perfectly acceptable thing that got taken over by a bunch of people we now consider to be nasty, for their own ends. In other words, a perfect example of rewriting history to expunge something that for most of its history was perfectly innocent ...
And how many Nazis actually WERE nasty people? And how many were ordinary decent people led astray and caught up in something they didn't see how they could avoid? And how many of the Nazis abhorrent practices were actually not that abnormal, even within their own living history?
(Not that I'm trying to excuse what happened, but much of it really was because they were merely the children of their times.) (My German ancestors were lucky to escape the Holocaust, and one of those very relatives is a Eugenicist ...)
Cheers,
Posted Jun 19, 2020 18:55 UTC (Fri)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (8 responses)
Posted Jun 19, 2020 21:26 UTC (Fri)
by Jandar (subscriber, #85683)
[Link] (7 responses)
Posted Jun 19, 2020 21:36 UTC (Fri)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (6 responses)
And India definitely should look at NOT using swastikas in new temples. Notwithstanding its current popularity among Indian nationalist extremists.
Posted Jun 19, 2020 23:17 UTC (Fri)
by Jandar (subscriber, #85683)
[Link] (5 responses)
A billion people should abandon one of their cultural good-luck symbols? I'm lost for words.
Posted Jun 19, 2020 23:39 UTC (Fri)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (4 responses)
And yes, Indians definitely should look at thier use of symbols that are offensive to OTHER billions of people.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 0:02 UTC (Sat)
by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
[Link] (1 responses)
Yeah, that's not going to happen. The symbols are ancient, aren't the same and while products intended for export change it anyway to avoid the cultural crossfires, the symbol use is very widespread and not limited to just one country. It's not just temples either. It is in all sort of products including rugs, tiles and so forth
Posted Jun 22, 2020 14:00 UTC (Mon)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link]
(A bunch of examples, some more impressive than others: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-26369329).
Posted Jun 20, 2020 15:24 UTC (Sat)
by NAR (subscriber, #1313)
[Link] (1 responses)
This comment shows exactly why this whole naming issue boils down to power. Who has the power to force other people to change their language, their religion. It's not about decency, goodwill - it's all about power. I do think people have every right to be offended when somebody calls them in a way they don't prefer (be it a racial slur or something else). But I also do think they don't have the right to ban that word from unrelated conversations. For example if Stan wants to be called Loretta, that's perfectly fine. If he wants to forbid other people using the word Stan - now that's where the problem starts.
I do admit I was startled when I saw bunch of swastikas on a Kyoto tourist map - but it would be preposterous of me to demand that they change those symbols. I do think being decent means that I accept that other people are different than me and don't force my views on them.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 20:15 UTC (Sat)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
> This comment shows exactly why this whole naming issue boils down to power.
And who exactly ARE those "other billions"? Or is that just hyperbole? There are one billion Indians, and even if we lump America and Europe together we don't even get close! Plus I bet a lot of non-Indians don't give a monkeys - I regularly see Swastikas over here (but yes, I am interested in WWII aircraft ...).
So the people for whom the swastika means "good luck" greatly exceeds the number of those offended, I expect...
Cheers,
Posted Jun 18, 2020 12:37 UTC (Thu)
by dullfire (guest, #111432)
[Link]
To suddenly decide to accept someone else's meaning for those words is the most prominent meaning is to give more credibility to that (IMO offense, even if it does have more reflection in reality that we'd like) meaning of the words. And it also means we are enslaving ourselves to someone else definitions. Where does it end? If we get through this current issue and then suddenly Asians are be oppressed would be start needing to ban words like 'yellow'? Or what if we have two groups that have mutually conflicting "requirements"?
I think a balance of sanity and respect needs to be made. Worry about red-black tree naming seems... insane. If some peoples negative situations make them unable to deal with our heritage (which AFAIK was never done out of malice), I don't really see how that mandates change on our part: unless we're to ourselves be slaves to the whims of anyone whom we believe is oppressed/treated awfully.
So yes. I can totally see avoiding certain terms in new code/designs. Going back through and changing all the code for no other reason that "somebody who's being abused might be reminded of their abuse by it" seems like it's opening an endless abyss.
Posted Jun 18, 2020 12:47 UTC (Thu)
by needs (guest, #98089)
[Link]
I can see why master and slave can hurt some people though. Even though to a developer the intent is not to be racist, but to accurately describe how the code works.
Regardless, allowlist and denylist feels more accurate, and the same goes with leader and followers (although it might depends on the context). This is a good reason IMO to use them in new code.
Posted Jun 18, 2020 12:48 UTC (Thu)
by Rudd-O (guest, #61155)
[Link] (8 responses)
Yeah, I'm gonna go with "anti-racism it's a religious cult" (better men have made that case in full, check out New Discourses for more info).
The reason you don't pay the Danegeld, is that later on you can't get rid of the Dane.
Posted Jun 22, 2020 14:04 UTC (Mon)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link] (7 responses)
Posted Jun 22, 2020 16:14 UTC (Mon)
by Rudd-O (guest, #61155)
[Link]
https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-antiracism/ is a useful reference for readers of this comment.
Posted Jun 22, 2020 16:23 UTC (Mon)
by milesrout (subscriber, #126894)
[Link] (5 responses)
When the ardent Twitter/GitHub/social media types turn up and are expected to actually write some code instead of their entire contribution being a 'code of conduct', they get treated like the twerps that they are. And then they call that sexist, because people disagreeing with their cultural imperialism is sexist now.
Thankfully you can basically avoid them entirely by just staying away from social media. If you avoid using GitHub as much as possible you should be fine. And obviously never create a Twitter, as that's literally the worst thing ever to happen to the internet and *everyone* knows it.
Posted Jun 22, 2020 17:58 UTC (Mon)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Jun 22, 2020 19:19 UTC (Mon)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link]
Been there, had that happen...
Posted Jun 22, 2020 20:46 UTC (Mon)
by milesrout (subscriber, #126894)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jun 22, 2020 21:00 UTC (Mon)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link]
Posted Jun 22, 2020 19:16 UTC (Mon)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link]
Posted Jun 18, 2020 13:28 UTC (Thu)
by jcpunk (subscriber, #95796)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jun 18, 2020 15:56 UTC (Thu)
by mbunkus (subscriber, #87248)
[Link]
Posted Jun 19, 2020 13:41 UTC (Fri)
by meerdan (subscriber, #119439)
[Link]
Posted Jun 18, 2020 13:51 UTC (Thu)
by anarcat (subscriber, #66354)
[Link] (6 responses)
How about people take a deep breath here and consider each other, and especially people who have suffered for hundreds of years? Maybe before you make a statement about terms like "black" you should take a step back and see if it's worth rehashing that suffering...
Posted Jun 18, 2020 13:52 UTC (Thu)
by anarcat (subscriber, #66354)
[Link]
In case that wasn't clear, I meant "especially *consider * people who have suffered for hundreds of years" here.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 2:20 UTC (Sat)
by milesrout (subscriber, #126894)
[Link] (2 responses)
How about *you* take a deep breath and think about why anyone should care that other people are offended. I get offended by things all the time. I don't expect others to change their behaviour, I just accept that I am offended and *get over it*.
What did people say to the Anglican Church when they were *offended* by Monty Python's The Life of Brian? 'Get over it' is what they were told and with good reason. Your being offended by something does not create any obligation in others to change their behaviour.
People in this thread have admitted they know the terms are not 'problematic' and are not being used in a problematic way, but that they are trying to take away those uses so that they can accuse anyone that continues to use the term a racist. Why should we allow that? Why are we allowing these people to control our use of language?
Posted Jun 21, 2020 5:00 UTC (Sun)
by flussence (guest, #85566)
[Link]
Could you do so a bit more quietly next time, please?
Posted Jun 22, 2020 14:09 UTC (Mon)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link]
(Someone arguing in good faith might note that someone appearing who was offended by master/slave *invalidates your own previous argument*. But nooo, you double down. Having someone appear who disproves your argument proves that your argument is right!)
Posted Jun 21, 2020 4:57 UTC (Sun)
by flussence (guest, #85566)
[Link] (1 responses)
Sometimes I really wish there was a way to vanish entire stories from the unread comments screen. Both Sturgeon's Law and the 1% rule are in full force here.
Posted Jun 27, 2020 8:57 UTC (Sat)
by flussence (guest, #85566)
[Link]
Posted Jun 18, 2020 16:10 UTC (Thu)
by tshow (subscriber, #6411)
[Link] (2 responses)
The master/slave terminology isn't really even a good analogy in most cases; manager/worker or director/actor or commander/agent all capture the behavior as well or better, without rubbing anyone's face in unrelated historical events.
Things like "blacklist" and "whitelist" are ambiguous, as pointed out elsewhere, and color associations can be completely arbitrary; colors have all sorts of conflicting meanings culturally. "allowlist" and "denylist" are unambiguous, and point to actually naming things for what they are, (buggy_device_list) rather than using a slang shorthand. Though in the ATA case I've long thought the "blacklist" should have been called "scuzzy_drives".
All the candidates I've seen for change are words that have dubious technical merit as actual names, and could easily be renamed to something both more descriptive and less provocative. This would have the dual benefits of improving the code and not pointlessly needling random people.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 2:16 UTC (Sat)
by milesrout (subscriber, #126894)
[Link]
Speaking as a white middle class male, changing the terms makes me uncomfortable. Why should the people that find the words uncomfortable take precedence over the existing usage and the people who are made uncomfortable by the change?
I don't see why being a white middle class made has anything to do with it, really. Are you trying to say your opinion should matter more? Or less? I think your view matters as much as anyone else's.
> The master/slave terminology isn't really even a good analogy in most cases; manager/worker or director/actor or commander/agent all capture the behavior as well or better, without rubbing anyone's face in unrelated historical events.
Nobody's face is being rubbed in any *historical* events. Slavery exists today, and has existed throughout all of human history. It's a horrible institution today, was a horrible institution in the past and will be a horrible institution as long as it continues to exist. Nobody with any real power seems to be doing anything to eliminate it in the present day, so I don't see why we'd expect it to be eliminated any time soon, but hopefully it will eventually be eliminated.
But it's important that we do not characterise slavery as something that is historical or in the past. It exists today. To call slavery historical is very Americo-centric. To call slavery a racist institution is also Americo-centric: race-based slavery is not typical of slavery as an institution in history or today.
>Things like "blacklist" and "whitelist" are ambiguous, as pointed out elsewhere, and color associations can be completely arbitrary; colors have all sorts of conflicting meanings culturally.
Black and white aren't colours, but tones. While there are different colour associations between different cultures, as far as I have been able to ascertain black and white have pretty consistent associations across cultures.
What's more the kernel is written in C with English comments, English documentation, English keywords, English function nanes, English everything. It's an English language project, along with most of the rest of programming. The same is true of git. So using the English language - and it seems, very widespread - associations with black and white makes sense, given anyone working on it needs to be pretty familiar with English anyway.
>"allowlist" and "denylist" are unambiguous, and point to actually naming things for what they are, (buggy_device_list) rather than using a slang shorthand. Though in the ATA case I've long thought the "blacklist" should have been called "scuzzy_drives".
Well you can go through and replace all the jargon, symbolism and metaphor in names everywhere in language with literal meanings but you'll find if you actually look at the etymology of the terms that everything is, at some level, a metaphor. To me 'blacklist' just means blacklist, it has nothing to do with the colour black. 'Block' as a verb comes, originally, from an analogy to a block of wood acting as a divider. It would have originally been thought of as a metaphor, then became lexicalised. The same thing has happened to blacklist: while originally it was used as "black list" to mean an evil list or a list of negative or evil things, it has become lexicalised to "blacklist" and now just means a list of things that are bad, no more related to the word 'black' than 'blocklist' is to logs of wood.
For that matter, what about the term 'log'? Why would we use the term 'log' to refer to a chronological, append-only sequence of records, when that term is just *slang shorthand*. The word 'log' might be confusing to people that don't understand the metaphor of it referring to a *logbook* which comes from a book used to record the speed of a ship, where 'log' referred to a floating bit of wood used to measure speed. We should call logs what they actually *are* rather than using slang shorthand. /s
A blacklist *is* what a blacklist is. It's not slang shorthand.
> All the candidates I've seen for change are words that have dubious technical merit as actual names, and could easily be renamed to something both more descriptive and less provocative. This would have the dual benefits of improving the code and not pointlessly needling random people.
It's not pointless to needle the people that choose to be offended by innocent words because they want to socially signal how 'woke' they are.
Posted Jun 21, 2020 9:28 UTC (Sun)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link]
(I say predominantly, because the same scum used white chalk, for example, to mark the doors of the homes they would loot and rape and burn and abuse next during religious wars, so the marks on the blacklist were white in that case. But, by and large, it‘s more convenient to pass lists of black marks on white paper than to go around marking doors with white chalk, that’s why language made it a black list).
Blacklists have been used for centuries against people of any color, and continue to be used against people of any color (there are parts of the world, where it is not good and safe to be white).
It’s not the color of the blacklist that matters, it’s the act of blacklisting people. Tomorrow the same black people will be on someone’s denylist, I’m sure they will feel nice and warm to know it was renamed.
By renaming, you’re giving weapons to the same scum that wants to blacklist people today for their use of the blacklist term, and will object next to expressions like "starting from a white sheet", even if the sheet of paper is objectively white before you write things on it.
Posted Jun 18, 2020 20:30 UTC (Thu)
by SPYFF (subscriber, #131114)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Jun 18, 2020 23:16 UTC (Thu)
by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784)
[Link] (2 responses)
We can, after all, perfectly well do both.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 2:01 UTC (Sat)
by milesrout (subscriber, #126894)
[Link]
Or, alternatively, we could not rename things that have no reason to be renamed, and focus efforts on doing things that actually matter, because the negative effects of changing language in this way are horrible.
Posted Jul 9, 2020 10:59 UTC (Thu)
by SPYFF (subscriber, #131114)
[Link]
My actual opinion is there are no systematic racism. And yet even if there are racist voices around opensource projects (I see zero over the years, but migh happens) I more scared about logocide and semanticide which happens day by day towards to a newspeak language.
Ferenc Fejes
Posted Jun 18, 2020 22:03 UTC (Thu)
by willy (subscriber, #9762)
[Link]
We even have a directory: drivers/w1/slaves/
Fortunately, some of this is under Our Grumpy Editor's control as it's in the Documentation directory!
Posted Jun 18, 2020 22:35 UTC (Thu)
by jafd (subscriber, #129642)
[Link] (3 responses)
FWIW, a computer program can be a slave of another program, as the term aptly describes someone who has no other purpose but do what a master commands. It's also more generic than "primary" and "replica" which mostly apply to database systems.
In some sense, every word is loaded. "Leader" and "follower", for example, _reek_ of cults. This is plain creepy.
P. S. Can't help but wonder how a survivor of modern slavery (which is very much a thing) would react if someone announced to them, "to reduce your pain, we have got rid of the words 'master' and 'slave' in the source text of a computer program you might have heard of."
Posted Jun 18, 2020 23:20 UTC (Thu)
by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784)
[Link] (2 responses)
For all that people in and out of the trade are fond of anthropomorphizing computers and their programmers, these things have (as yet) no life, no free will, and no moral agency.
Computers and computer programs are our tools.
Posted Jun 19, 2020 0:47 UTC (Fri)
by neilbrown (subscriber, #359)
[Link] (1 responses)
I cannot help wondering if this is what slave traders of bygone years thought about their cargo.
I'm not saying that I disagree with you (I don't). I just think that the irony is worth highlighting and reflecting on.
Posted Jun 21, 2020 2:11 UTC (Sun)
by himi (subscriber, #340)
[Link]
Regarding true AI, personally I think by the time we get there we'll have sorted this stuff out enough that it'll be clear that any sentient entity (natural or artificial) will deserve the same rights, and we'll end up having to pay our AIs a living wage.
At least, I /hope/ that's how it'll be.
Posted Jun 19, 2020 1:13 UTC (Fri)
by smitty_one_each (subscriber, #28989)
[Link]
Posted Jun 19, 2020 4:15 UTC (Fri)
by dxin (guest, #136611)
[Link]
It makes me sad that rather than acting on the inequality we are acting on the reminder instead. This is basically trying to be supportive but not actually supporting to resolve the problem, which is essentially what "supportive" means these days.
Posted Jun 19, 2020 9:27 UTC (Fri)
by eru (subscriber, #2753)
[Link] (3 responses)
I can see why we should lose "slave". A software project I worked on initially used it, but changed it to "hand" (as in "farmhand") already about 30 years ago, because we though it could be offensive. "Blacklist" and "whitelist" can also go, because the alternatives are much clearer.
But "master" has mostly meanings not connected with oppression: A leader like ship's master, or master of ceremonies, or a person with acknowledged great skill in some art. In the medieval guild system, a "master" was a tradesman entitled to have his own shop, and he needed to demonstrate his skill to earn the recognition. But he did not employ slaves, only free men. In fact, as an European, I never before connected this word with slavery, and wondered why in the "Game of Thrones" the term for the ruling class in slave-owning eastern cities was "wise masters". This discussion has made me understand why George RR Martin used that word, but it definitely is a local connotation.
Posted Jun 19, 2020 13:50 UTC (Fri)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (1 responses)
Hence the word "masterpiece" - ALWAYS MADE BY AN APPRENTICE!
It was effectively their practical exam - pass it and it's your masterpiece - the piece that made you a master.
Cheers,
Posted Jun 19, 2020 18:58 UTC (Fri)
by anselm (subscriber, #2796)
[Link]
You start out as an apprentice and when you've learned your trade you become a journeyman (journeyperson?). This means that you get to travel and work for employers in different areas to improve your skills further. The “masterpiece” comes only after you've done that for a few years, and want to settle down and open your own shop as a master.
The idea of travelling and working in different places for some time has pretty much died out in most crafts. Here in Germany the only people who keep that sort of tradition are house carpenters, and you sometimes see the journeyman carpenters looking for work. They're easily recognised by their black hats, jackets, and bell-bottom trousers and the huge wooden walking sticks and bundles that they carry.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 1:59 UTC (Sat)
by milesrout (subscriber, #126894)
[Link]
I can't see why it would be offensive. Human slavery is offensive, but 'slave' as a term is much wider than that. Should we stop using the term 'Slav' to refer to.. well.. Slavs? After all, that's where the term 'slave' comes from originally.
>"Blacklist" and "whitelist" can also go, because the alternatives are much clearer.
Blacklist and whitelist are perfectly clear and have a long history inside and outside computing. They're just jargon in computing, something you have to learn, but they're also used outside of computing and have no history of being associated with racism at all. "Blacklist" is recorded in usage in the 17th century and I think possibly earlier too? Regardless, a very long time ago and not at all racist.
Posted Jun 19, 2020 11:10 UTC (Fri)
by jafd (subscriber, #129642)
[Link] (39 responses)
How exactly are those changes going to help solve the perceived problems the original terms are being told to contribute to?
Posted Jun 19, 2020 12:26 UTC (Fri)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link] (38 responses)
These changes help in two ways:
Are they enough on their own? No, definitely not. Should we refuse to deal with the small issues until the big problems are dealt with? Again, no - each issue dealt with is worthwhile in its own right, even if we're not in a position to fix everything.
Posted Jun 19, 2020 13:59 UTC (Fri)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (8 responses)
And this is exactly what is wrong with political correctness. By actively changing the meaning of words, you are impeding conversation and encouraging confusion, making malicious actors lives easier.
Okay, I agree with just being nice and not using words if they are offensive (and as others have pointed out, changing things is actually likely to *reduce* confusion and *increase* clarity in this instance).
But to talk about things in generic terms, people who object to jargon are just too lazy to learn the subject-specific language, and in doing so they actively hinder specialists' ability to communicate clearly.
Be very careful about what you wish for - you may get it! (How many people here find themselves scratching their heads when casual acquaintances say "my computer has one terabyte of ram"?) (Or when somebody - as has happened to me - happily referred to an interactive system as "real time"? And then said "well, computers are so fast now that the original concept of "real time" is redundant!)
Cheers,
Posted Jun 19, 2020 14:20 UTC (Fri)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link] (7 responses)
There is a difference between changing the meaning of words and simply removing non-offensive uses from offensive words, and to conflate the two is a dangerous argument.
Saying that people are upset by meaningful jargon is different to saying that we should try to remove words that are offensive when used in some contexts from contexts where their offensive meaning is not intended. The distinction is that blacklist, slave and the like all have people who say that, as a consequence of the historical echoes of the 17th through 20th centuries in which slavery and racism were normal, they would prefer us to find less loaded terms, whereas (e.g.) RAM for computer main memory is not offensive, as it's meaningless outside the jargon context.
Posted Jun 19, 2020 15:12 UTC (Fri)
by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106)
[Link] (4 responses)
The best way to deal with the injuries of the past is to *let them heal*. Don't forget the history—we need to learn from the past so that we can do better in the future—but don't keep bringing it up in completely unrelated contexts. Let these "problematic" terms become blunted and repurposed as society evolves. A society where terms like "master" and "blacklist" carry no association whatsoever with slavery or racism, respectively, is a *far better* society than one where these concepts are deemed so relevant and urgent that they deserve their own exclusive terminology.
Posted Jun 19, 2020 16:06 UTC (Fri)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link]
But part of that is that each time they have to move on to new jargon, they shrink the group, because each movement onwards forces them to admit that they are not, in fact, speaking for the silent majority, but are a minority group themselves.
And my lived experience over the last 30 years is that to heal the injuries of the past, you either need society to confront them head-on (as the Truth and Reconciliation Committee did in South Africa), or you need to change language, at least for a while, so that you stop picking at the sores created by injustices. With the language shift, so that it's clear when we use these terms that we're discussing injustice, it becomes possible to have an open discussion and to fix the underlying problem.
Posted Jun 19, 2020 22:02 UTC (Fri)
by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325)
[Link] (2 responses)
Language has shifted in this fashion for hundreds if not thousands of years (see for example the various words meaning "a person with dark skin" that have been used over the years). Why stop now?
More to the point: What makes you believe it is *possible* to stop now? Do you imagine we will set up an English equivalent to the Académie Française, that will review every proposed change to the language, and issue recommendations that everyone will ignore (see https://xkcd.com/1726/)? I tend to imagine most of us could find a less Sisyphean use of our time.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 1:52 UTC (Sat)
by milesrout (subscriber, #126894)
[Link] (1 responses)
But that's the problem: that's what people are trying to do to English. Except instead of language experts doing it, it's woke American "liberals" (poor use of terminology by the Americans there, because there's nothing actually liberal in the traditional sense of the word about restricting what words people can use, that's authoritarian) on Twitter telling people what language they're allowed to use, then calling them racist if they don't comply.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 6:27 UTC (Sat)
by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325)
[Link]
Posted Jun 19, 2020 19:56 UTC (Fri)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
Except in my example it is NOT main memory. Have you ever come across a consumer laptop with main memory measured in terabytes?
Cheers,
Posted Jun 20, 2020 1:56 UTC (Sat)
by milesrout (subscriber, #126894)
[Link]
The word 'master' is not offensive. The word 'slave' is not offensive. *Slavery* is offensive, but it's not the *word* slavery that's offensive but the *practice* that is offensive. 'Blacklist' is not offensive. Literally the only thing I can imagine that anyone could find offensive about it is that it is derived from the word 'black' to mean negative or evil. But that's a fundamental cultural association that all English speakers have regardless of race, and has nothing to do with race, you're not going to erase it, and it's got nothing to do with American racial terms like 'black people'. American concepts of race don't even have any biological or scientific basis they're literally meaningless. For example see the Americans trying to work out what race that guy Zimmerman was. Is he 'latino' or 'white'? Are people from Spain white? Are people from Mexico white? It depends on the weather, it seems.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 1:48 UTC (Sat)
by milesrout (subscriber, #126894)
[Link] (4 responses)
Exactly, this is only being used to break people apart into groups and then dogpile on any group that refuses to conform. I'm going to continue to use 'master' and 'slave' terminology because it's not racist. I'm going to keep using 'blacklist' and 'whitelist' because it's not racist.
Do I think American cops should stop shooting unarmed black people? Of course I do. I'm a sane human being. Does that mean I need to have my language policed by Americans on Twitter? Hell no.
There's no 'problematic' use of the term 'master/slave' any more than it's 'problematic' to have a command on my system called 'kill' or a C standard library function called 'abort'.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 3:45 UTC (Sat)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (3 responses)
Just think about how other people will react to this.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 11:16 UTC (Sat)
by dottedmag (subscriber, #18590)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jun 20, 2020 16:55 UTC (Sat)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (1 responses)
No, you'll just end up being treated like those poor senior citizen in Sotuhern states who just insist on calling black people "negroes" and asking to be sat apart from them in restaurants. I.e. with a thinly veiled disgust.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 17:43 UTC (Sat)
by dottedmag (subscriber, #18590)
[Link]
Posted Jun 20, 2020 8:48 UTC (Sat)
by jafd (subscriber, #129642)
[Link]
Also, no one, I say it again, NO ONE arguing for "fixing dictionaries" does actually know jack about what slavery looks like in the 21st century. I wish they educated themselves and had a reality check.
But hey, it's so much better just to force people to change words and issue statements whether it has merit or not, because those changes are tedious enough to make everyone look busy wielding their text editors and feel good about "making a difference", while at the same time being too superficial and easy to solve any of the, you know, real problems.
There's a comment from an actual Black man over here who postulates a very simple wish. Just stop randomly killing and harrassing black people, and in fact any people at all. That would be a very nice start.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 16:27 UTC (Sat)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link] (22 responses)
Rooting “evil” people is lynch mob behavior.
And if you want to lambast us about the evilness of 19th century racist America, remember who was lynched first then (and that a 3-letter organization that specialized in those operations still exists).
That’s were the evil is, not in people using perfectly neutral words like master.
¹ In my experience racist people do not especially try to hide, they make their opinion very clear because proving they are “better” is the whole point of the exercise, and how do you prove something that you are hiding?
Posted Jun 20, 2020 16:48 UTC (Sat)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (21 responses)
I guess your next argument will include Hitler somehow.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 17:00 UTC (Sat)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link] (18 responses)
The first people that will fell to the vocabulary police will be the same marginalized people the whole exercise claims to protect.
That’s what a mob or rightful people gets you in all ages and all societies. Woes to anyone unlucky enough not to be part of the majority group when word policing is in force.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 20:14 UTC (Sat)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link] (17 responses)
You mean a mob like the Stonewall riots, yes, which have ensured that LGBT+ people throughout the Western world are killed for their beliefs?
Posted Jun 20, 2020 20:39 UTC (Sat)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link] (16 responses)
Posted Jun 20, 2020 20:46 UTC (Sat)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link] (15 responses)
Ah, so you mean like the Boston rebels in 1773, who felt entitled by their own perception of being right to ignore the constrictions of laws to behave like animals to people (the British) that they considered wrong, and ended up overthrowing lawful authority to establish their own country based on their own perception of being right? Or maybe the ANC (Nelson Mandela's party) in South Africa, who again felt that their own perception of being right entitled them to ignore the constrictions of law and behave like animals towards the Apartheid authorities? It also describes the Stonewall rioters, and the various anti-Nazi resistance movements in Occupied Europe back in the 1940s.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 20:53 UTC (Sat)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link] (14 responses)
Two wrongs do not make one right.
Harassing people because you feel badly treated does not make the harassment right.
He did it first is kindergarten excuse level.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 21:08 UTC (Sat)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link] (13 responses)
Yes, I do know what you mean - all of the groups I've named would be part of what you mean had they not succeeded in their goals.
What you're talking about is the nasty tendency in popular history to elide the underlying vicious mobs that were part of how these groups succeeded, because that's not a nice look; we remember the vicious mobs in the Nazi Reich, because they lost, but not the nasty mobs in the British Empire or the American War of Independence, because they were victors.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 21:49 UTC (Sat)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link] (12 responses)
Posted Jun 21, 2020 7:01 UTC (Sun)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link] (11 responses)
1. the French revolutionaries renamed months because they considered months names loaded words, that condoned the power of the Catholic church, which had been sitting on vast amounts of riches while the country was starving. You could be sent to the guillotine just because a local asshole caught you giving a date using the past christian calendar, which “proved” you were either a counter revolutionary, or “hiding” counter revolutionaries by using the same language as them
2. the Russians revolutionaries were very much of word-smithing and loaded terms too
3. Mac Carthy did the same in reverse in anti-communist USA
4. before that use of common words, that happened to appear in Catholic lithurgy texts, could send you to jail (or worse) in Reformist parts of Europe as a Popist, and use of other common words, that were prevalent in some Psalms, could do the same in counter-reformist parts.
5. Mysoginists would burn women for a bad word that showed they were witches deep down.
And so on.
That‘s what loading common language words with connotations gives you. It’s not an innocent peace-giving atonement exercise. It’s giving weapons to the worst of us to do their worst. Usually, against the most vulnerable and fragile and marginalized parts of the population, because that’s the safest target for local bullies.
You will have Latinos sent packing for something that shows disrespect to Blacks, Blacks dismissed for something taken as mysoginist by the local mistress, Gays looked over for some other loaded term use, and so on.
It never ends because language has lots of history (and when it has not, history is fairly easy to make up), providing endless opportunities for the population layers in power to condemn those who are not.
Posted Jun 21, 2020 11:12 UTC (Sun)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link] (10 responses)
Ah, I see your misconception. These words are not being loaded with connotations now; they've had these bad connotations since at least the 1950s, but instead of trying to handle these bad connotations (left-overs of Empire for a start), we've burnt records of our atrocities, raised Churchill onto a pedestal, and pretended that none of the bad things actually happened. The USA has had similar issues addressing its own racism, and again has preferred to pretend that it never gave these words bad connotations.
And now that lack of addressing deep issues is coming to a head, and because we've not even attempted to address the problem, we're being asked to retire meanings that we used to justify not looking at the bad side of what we did, so that we have no choice left but to accept that we did engage in hugely unjust behaviour, and that it still has echoes today.
Posted Jun 21, 2020 11:39 UTC (Sun)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link] (9 responses)
Indignation at others can be an addictive business.
It’s no better right now than when the same rightful thinkers condemned a Black man for a word that could be constructed as a sexual advance to a White woman.
Whoever is the target of their angst does not matter much (and whoever they pretend defending does not matter much either), only that they are on the rightful side, and prove it by abusing someone not on the rightful side.
Posted Jun 21, 2020 12:54 UTC (Sun)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link] (8 responses)
Then you've been in blissful ignorance for at least the last 30 years. This has been happening all that time, and there's been backpressure because "we don't see colour" or "racism is being dealt with". It's taken it erupting into the wider public before you see it, and now you're seeing it all the time.
Don't mistake your ignorance for fact.
Posted Jun 22, 2020 11:32 UTC (Mon)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link] (7 responses)
Which, is pretty much what I wrote people were doing before you objected.
Thank you for making my point.
Posted Jun 22, 2020 12:03 UTC (Mon)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link] (6 responses)
And I see that you are continuing to cherry-pick only the examples that prove your point, and have ignored the examples I have given of cases where word policing has led to better outcomes.
Thank you for proving my point!
Posted Jun 22, 2020 15:55 UTC (Mon)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link] (5 responses)
You’ve provided none except for a piece of clearly offensive USA slang which is hardly in the same category as the common words you are crusading against.
Posted Jun 22, 2020 16:02 UTC (Mon)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link] (4 responses)
Exactly - I provided an example, and you've completely ignored it because it doesn't fit your narrative.
And now, instead of addressing how this is also an example of language policing, and it does improve things, you're dismissing it as "clearly offensive" instead of explaining how it's an exception to your narrative.
Please, be consistent. Either language policing is an unmitigated bad, in which case you need to explain why this particular instance of language policing is an exception, or you accept that language policing is sometimes OK, in which case your whole argument (that we can't do this because language policing is an unmitigated bad) falls apart.
Posted Jun 22, 2020 16:24 UTC (Mon)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link] (3 responses)
The world is not binary and Manichean (like you want human language to be binary and Manichean).
A clear insult that can not be constructed as anything but an insult is not in the same category as common words which have many different applications.
And, BTW, thank you for confirming that your “examples” (plural) are limited to this single wikipedia link.
Posted Jun 22, 2020 16:49 UTC (Mon)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link] (2 responses)
"nigger in the woodpile" is not an insult - it literally just means "something that ought to be discussed, but is being hidden instead".
And I'm not the one saying that language is binary and Manichean - that's your claim, to which I have added an example that you do not like, so you are instead reduced to insulting me because to do otherwise is to admit that your position is incoherent and amounts to "I like these words, why can't I make other people use them even though they want to change to other words they like better?"
And thank you for confirming that you don't want to engage with your own prejudices here, but instead want to be an authority about what I am and am not permitted to believe.
Posted Jun 25, 2020 5:58 UTC (Thu)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link] (1 responses)
Policing behaviour is a matter for the police, applying democratically voted laws, not for self appointed vigilantes that invent strenuous pretexts so they can indulge in harassment and bask in the power of imposing their will on others
Posted Jun 25, 2020 7:47 UTC (Thu)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link]
And yet you are policing people's behaviour, by saying that they are not permitted to change the language used in FOSS to language they are more comfortable with?
Why are you so damned upset about people stepping up to do the work to change the language here?
Posted Jun 20, 2020 17:31 UTC (Sat)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (1 responses)
And there are far worse things you can do to people than killing them - the PC crowd certainly know about that ...
Cheers,
Posted Jun 20, 2020 19:54 UTC (Sat)
by corbet (editor, #1)
[Link]
Posted Jun 20, 2020 0:30 UTC (Sat)
by rbranco (subscriber, #129813)
[Link] (9 responses)
Posted Jun 20, 2020 0:38 UTC (Sat)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (8 responses)
Posted Jun 20, 2020 0:45 UTC (Sat)
by rbranco (subscriber, #129813)
[Link] (6 responses)
It's not a problem (only bike-shedding) and the "solutions" only bring more problems.
Start for renaming "git" as well.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 1:07 UTC (Sat)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (5 responses)
Posted Jun 20, 2020 1:49 UTC (Sat)
by milesrout (subscriber, #126894)
[Link] (4 responses)
It's a pretty standard tactic of social signalling. Yell 'I'm not a racist and I don't use master for my git branches' and you try to create an association between not being racist and not using the term master, in turn trying to create an association between using the term master and being racist.
The problem is, master/slavery terminology has nothing to do with racism whatsoever, because slavery has nothing to do with racism and never has had anything to do with racism outside of one instance of slavery in history: American slavery. Well sorry bucko but America isn't the centre of the world.
Posted Jun 22, 2020 14:25 UTC (Mon)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link] (3 responses)
You are arguing in bad faith.
Posted Jun 22, 2020 16:31 UTC (Mon)
by milesrout (subscriber, #126894)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jun 22, 2020 19:23 UTC (Mon)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jun 22, 2020 20:47 UTC (Mon)
by milesrout (subscriber, #126894)
[Link]
Posted Jun 20, 2020 1:44 UTC (Sat)
by milesrout (subscriber, #126894)
[Link]
Change the name of your default branch to 'main' or 'default' if you want, but trying to get everyone else to change to suit you is idiotic. Of course, Cyberax, you spend your *life* trolling the LWN comment section so it's not surprise you're trolling in this thread too is it...
Posted Jun 20, 2020 13:01 UTC (Sat)
by ras (subscriber, #33059)
[Link] (1 responses)
The gay pride movement taught me that lesson. "Gay", "fag" and a number of other words I forget were regularly hurled at them as insults, and for a long while they reacted just like people are reacting to "slave" and "blacklist" here. That reaction had precisely the wrong outcome. Banning them from common use just sharpens their effect, granting them a power they don't deserve, making them wound that much deeper when someone does use them.
One day decades ago the gay movement had an epiphany. Instead of letting those words vilify them, they said "yes I'm a fag/gay, and I'm proud of it". They adopted those words for their own use, regularly using them to describe each other.
I remember being shocked when it first happened. I was listening to people proudly label themselves with what I had been brought up to believe were bad and intolerant words that were not used in polite company - words of derision. In hindsight the effect of the change was entirely predictable. When people start labelling themselves with a word, and use it with pride, you can't hurl it at them with the expectation it will wound them.
I regard that moment as the start of the movement I now see playing out its end game today. Once the gays themselves started wearing the words describing their alternate sexuality with pride, the rest of us were forced to confront why we didn't don't do the same thing. Naturally we discovered there was no good reason, so eventually we followed their example and accepted their sexuality just as they had done.
The intentions behind excluding these words from polite discourse are noble, but people you are doing the wrong thing. You are enhancing their power to be derogatory and humiliating, not reducing it.
Posted Jun 20, 2020 15:38 UTC (Sat)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
And all this *American* angst causes other language problems over here - most of the Indians here came from Africa, and to actually call someone "African" implies they are *WHITE* from South Africa. Because many blacks consider themselves Caribbean (as do I, but I'm white ...)
American cultural nuances are very different from ours ... (African Brit has overtones of treachery ... certainly I would NEVER use that term ...)
Cheers,
Posted Jun 22, 2020 3:45 UTC (Mon)
by atai (subscriber, #10977)
[Link]
Posted Jun 22, 2020 12:52 UTC (Mon)
by bud (subscriber, #5327)
[Link]
I believe that language is indeed a very powerful change agent--as has been shown for example in the area of gender equality. But it may also be the quick thing to adjust on the surface while leaving the essence unchanged.
So I would be very interested in hearing what the free software community could do beyond changing of terminology. The time is ripe to actually change things. I expect this community to include many people willing to contribute to such change. What may be missing is some more guidance of what to do. I think that people on the receiving end of discrimination may be the most suited to tell us how we could help.
Posted Jun 22, 2020 14:19 UTC (Mon)
by jafd (subscriber, #129642)
[Link] (1 responses)
What will actually happen: words will be invented which are worse than the original terms, sound worse in any language to boot (allowlist is atrocious), and there's going to be an army of activists with too much time on their hands trawling Github projects to harass them into adopting the newspeak, or put political statements into READMEs and license texts. There will be some more drama.
Meanwhile, police brutality will continue even more rampantly, as there's absolutely no interest in deescalating conflicts. De facto segregation by color will persist. People will be even more polarized, and countries will be even more isolationist than they are now.
The slogans "X lives matter" will gradually change, first in meaning, later in caption, to "ONLY X lives matter". There will be many different values of X. However, all blood spilled on the street will still be red, as many will see.
Among this chaos, some people will pat themselves on the back about having done search-and-replace in some source code and documentation that one time, telling stories about "how they made a difference".
Posted Jun 23, 2020 1:53 UTC (Tue)
by himi (subscriber, #340)
[Link]
Posted Jun 23, 2020 8:45 UTC (Tue)
by balkanboy (guest, #94926)
[Link] (5 responses)
Posted Jun 26, 2020 8:19 UTC (Fri)
by cpitrat (subscriber, #116459)
[Link] (4 responses)
Actually I think this is a good opportunity to reflect on the use that is made of those term and switch to more precise and meaningful terms. I've seen the master/slave names been used for very different things even in the same application. Sometimes a slave is a hot-standby, sometimes a cold-standby, sometimes a read-only replica, etc ... Coming up with short distinct descriptive names would actually be beneficial so that you don't have to explain every time you mention "slave" which kind of slave it is.
Posted Jun 26, 2020 18:02 UTC (Fri)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (3 responses)
DON'T make them for "we want to be nice to other people" - our British experience is it makes matters worse, and if I was on the receiving end I'd be rather offended at other people telling me what was good for me.
Cheers,
Posted Jun 26, 2020 19:28 UTC (Fri)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (2 responses)
Renaming the Royal Ulster Constabulary to the Police Service of Northern Ireland definitely did not make matters worse.
Posted Jun 26, 2020 22:44 UTC (Fri)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (1 responses)
What I'm thinking of is White Brits telling White Brits "you can't do this you might offend Muslims, you can't do that you might offend the Blacks, you can't do the other you might offend ..."
Arrogantly speaking on behalf of others without listening to said others saying "Stop speaking on our behalf! We don't want what you're asking for!" And this entire kerfuffle to me seems to be exactly that - one bunch of people speaking on behalf of another, without paying any attention to what those others actually want!
Cheers,
Posted Jun 26, 2020 23:17 UTC (Fri)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link]
It was good. Clearly, unambiguously good.
Posted Jun 25, 2020 9:26 UTC (Thu)
by LyonJE (guest, #139567)
[Link]
Posted Jun 25, 2020 14:53 UTC (Thu)
by sbakker (subscriber, #58443)
[Link]
Posted Jun 25, 2020 21:16 UTC (Thu)
by sombragris (guest, #65430)
[Link]
I understand the importance of word choices. Slavery is not something in the past but very much in the present, indeed. But this is just too much snowflakery.
Posted Jun 26, 2020 21:51 UTC (Fri)
by darktjm (guest, #19598)
[Link] (1 responses)
What to do? I can't just change the OS I've been using since the Amiga disappeared. I mean, I never loved Linux, but at least it was better than the alternatives at the time. I guess I'll just distance myself even more from the "community" so that I don't ever have to hear this bullshit again. I don't even know why I still read LWN. I stopped caring about the content well over a decade ago.
Posted Jun 26, 2020 22:47 UTC (Fri)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
Cheers,
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If there are people who are telling us that terms like "slave" or "blacklist" are a hurtful reminder of the inequities that persist in our society, we need to accept that as the truth and act upon it.
http://www.bitkeeper.org/tips.html#_how_do_i_rebase_my_work_on_top_of_a_different_changeset
https://github.com/bitkeeper-scm/bitkeeper/blob/master/doc/HOWTO.ask#L223
https://users.bitkeeper.org/t/branching-with-bk/158/2
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Wol
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Wol
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Slavery only exists on non-caucasian countries now.Loaded terms in free software
Bruh, tens of thousands of sex slaves are trafficked through the U.S. annually. But yes, the narrative from our legislature, media, and education system suggest this is not a problem worth mentioning.
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and saying "changing words in a technical domain for non technical reasons may not be worth it".
And we also have current issues with police treatment of some racial groups (not as bad as the US thankfully but still unacceptable).
Many people protest about that and try to fix it, which is, of course, good.
At my work we talk about whitelists and blacklists (and even green, grey, and brown ones too) and master/slave architectures not just as internal names within the code but as features of the system exposed to customers. And no one bats an eye. It's a non issue here.
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Wol
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Wol
Loaded terms in free software - what's English
Germanic-speaking Keltoi
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Wol
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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/mar/01/how-ameri...
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Wol
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`shit` in my language). And they keep selling it in other countries. So maybe
it's time to have a fork-per-culture? So linux-us, linux-swahili, .... so you
can really tailor the terminology used to the culture?
language.
versus multi-language list of profanities and automatically create pull request
renaming them. Let the update churn never end.
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Wol
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git#Naming
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Wol
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Yes.
The word "system" is not related to the history of bloody suppression of systems engineers.
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Wol
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https://github.com/django/django/pull/2692#issuecomment-4...
https://github.com/django/django/pull/2692#issuecomment-4...
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> Yes.
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Wol
> You can't ban "black", it's a freakin' color.
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> Have you ever heard of Montenegro (black mountain)?
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Wol
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ungendered language
ungendered language
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Wol
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So now you're proposing somehow limiting other peoples' freedom to keep using your words?
I don't think anybody is proposing renaming everything at once. Just stop adding new uses of objectionable words.
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> Yes, throwing the shitstains out
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A total non-sequitur.
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Wol
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklisting#Origins_of_the...
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Wol
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I see it as only a small stretch to suggest that you plug the LGA package into the LGA socket.
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Should we avoid leader, too?
It's sometimes very hard to find words that don't have special meaning to _some_ people.
Here in Germany we used to call some kind of black candy 'Mohrenkopf' (= head of a black person).
https://www.dict.cc/?s=Mohrenkopf
Because it remotely looks like the head of a black person. That's racist, because it refers to people and because of the history of the word 'Mohr'.
Changing existing names sometimes has a huge cost and it is kind of like this: https://xkcd.com/927/
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> Should we avoid leader, too?
Perhaps in German, yes. It doesn't have these connotations in other languages.
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Pure practicality. There will always be individuals and small groups triggered by everything, so a balance must be struck at some point. A group must at least be significant in some way for its objections to matter.
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So renaming them to writer/reader or allow/deny respectively, is actually helpful.
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Ferenc Fejes
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i'm not a german native speaker, but if i remember things correctly, anyone using the word “führer” as a translation for “leader” would do that in bad faith; especially that there's always “leiter” around the corner.
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Pure practicality. There will always be individuals and small groups triggered by everything, so a balance must be struck at some point. A group must at least be significant in some way for its objections to matter.
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Oh really? The currently dominant group has been changing language for millenia. It doesn't have any power whatsoever.
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2. The text will not be translated, and non-English speakers have to either learn English or give up on reading it. (Or replace "English" with whatever language it was written in.)
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Wol
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youse, yiz, all y'all
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- moor, meaning to tie off a ship or boat, came from Middle English (moren), and is "akin to" Middle Dutch (meren, maren).
- Moor, meaning a person from North Africa, came from Latin (Maurus) via Anglo-French and Middle English (More). It originally referred to Mauretania.**
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauretania
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Should we avoid leader, too?"
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execution!
execution!
execution!
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We should certainly acknowledge that there are more burning issues in the world, ranging from urgent to chokingly pressing. Perhaps better places to focus our attention.
But, as a twitchy multi-tasker, I'm not very receptive to the idea that we can only improve one of those at a time. `sed`ing a few words may not save lives, but it won't cost more than a few minutes of yours.
But, we do need to stop somewhere, don't we?
We may disagree on this issue, dear Opponents, but dismissing you all as insincere, sock-puttets, or bots, is dishonest at best and robbing you of your humanity at worst. Empathy has to cut both ways, or we're not being honest with ourselves.
I'm not too worried about slippery slopes, so much as I am of roads paved with good intentions. So let's make the improvements that we should, and resist the temptation to let over-eagerness speak for victims that may not exist, looking for slights when there are none.
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Can confirm, I've been looking at merge requests internally flying by with terminology renames being applied all over the place. The only difference? A lot less complaining, because everyone actually seems to want it.
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At least at my workplace, it was the engineers who specifically decided together to change all of it. Nobody higher-up asked for it to happen. Everyone has been hugely supportive of it.
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Wol
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Take PRIDE in being a modern democracy - demand that the right to vote includes the right to be given the OPPORTUNITY to vote!
Wol
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"They" are also coming to abduct you in black helicopters and do experiments on you.
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Wol
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English (was Re: Loaded terms in free software)
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This is not going anywhere useful, and this article is approaching 400 comments. I think that is enough. Please stop here.
Stop here please
Stop here please
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They'll never be sated
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Wol
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But Linux seems to bake old language into the code and API's.
Getting Linux to get rid of things like ifenslave, bond slave, etc will be harder.
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As an added bonus, with some careful writing the new wording can be clearer than the old documentation.
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Robot
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There was malenki robot barely 70 years ago. It's still in living memory.
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> Plumbers on the African continent, and you had a choice about giving a
> talk about how the git master branch operates, or a talk about slave
> devices which one would you feel more immediately comfortable leading?
> Any hesitation you would feel freely using the word slave with a
> predominantly black audience is a similar speed bump a contributor
> might feel needing to consume that term to get their job done.
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I'd bet it's vanishingly small.
Are we really going to change the hundreds of thousands if not millions of data sheets, schematics, PCB layouts, car documentation etc for absolutely no real world gain?
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The fact that "master" is just a convention in git rather than anything special doesn't mean there won't be any impact because it was assumed somewhere.
But I'd prefer the justification to be "this term isn't clear" rather then "black is a bad word".
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Wol
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There is no trace of Viking slavery in modern society, unlike American slavery in American society. You cannot tell (or guess) by looking at somebody that their ancestors were slaves. Moreover, nobody feels (or even knows) like slavery is part of their heritage. It's too long ago. Maybe there aren't even many survivors, I wouldn't know.
Fun fact: in Iceland this is not so true: ~62% of Icelandic mtDNA derives from Scotland and Ireland, while 75% of Icelandic Y chromosome lineages are Scandiavian. It seems likely that there were so many generations of raids taking women from Ireland and Scotland (places easily reachable from Iceland) that this has permanently affected the Icelandic population's genome. (You can't tell this from *looking* at them, mind you.)
Make this article free?
I would like to share it more widely.
Make this article free?
Make this article free?
Make this article free?
As long as it is done in moderation, the posting of subscriber links appears to be only good for LWN. It's one of our best ways of bringing in new subscribers. We obviously don't want people to go nuts with it, but it has almost never been problem to this point.
Make this article free?
Make this article free?
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Wol
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And yes, Indians definitely should look at thier use of symbols that are offensive to OTHER billions of people.
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Wol
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So what you mean by "There's really no basis on which to be sexist in the first place" is "People can present as male in order to be treated the same as everyone else"
That doesn't necessarily work, anyway. Those of us who are unlucky enough to project something a predatory human sees as "vulnerable/victim" will be attacked anyway. Gender and race are just two of a great many perceived axes they're willing to attack you on. Being different in any way at all is enough -- and if you're not different, they'll invent a difference to create a suitable outgroup.
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I find this impossible to believe from anyone who's spent even five minutes on a crowded IRC server:
Loaded terms in free software
I've never seen anyone be racist or sexist on IRC or over email.
I saw my first crude sexist joke perhaps ten minutes after joining my first IRC channel on a public server. Perhaps you're just incapable of spotting them, or spending all your time on work servers or servers with hardly any people on them?
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Know that there is definition of done.
Scuttling the Roman alphabets English language will not be enough.
Because it's not clear that this is a reasoned discussion.
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Wol
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Wol
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Wol
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
You are certainly free to do so. Heck, keep on using words "negro" (it just means "black"), bitch (not an insult, it just means "female dog") and naming your main repository branch "I_am_an_asshole". Nobody stops you.
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Oh wow. Equating lynching and asking people to not use some ill-fitting terms.
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Wol
This subthread (and a few others) would appear to have gone as far as they need to go; can we maybe stop here?
Maybe it's time to stop
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Nobody is realistically offended by 'master' either. They're just pretending to be offended, to, as someone actually admitted in the comments, try to make anyone that continues to use the term look like a racist even when they aren't one.
Yet four minutes after you posted this, you replied to someone who was upset by these terms. You told them to get over themselves and called them "these people", i.e. not the people who matter and who should be allowed to take decisions.
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
You are making the problem worse
You are making the problem worse
Wol
Loaded terms in free software
beyond terminology: what can we do?
Bookmark this, come back in a year or two
Bookmark this, come back in a year or two
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Wol
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Wol
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Subversion sees tree:
Says, “There is no ‘master branch’!
It's a ‘trunk’, you git!”
Loaded terms in free software
But why should "master" be banned?
"Master" come from the Latin "magister", which means a teacher, or a magistrate.
Why any master's degree should be considered offensive?
Loaded terms in free software
Loaded terms in free software
Wol
