Linux Foundation is nuts.

Words are words, and like any blunt object may be used as a weapon or a stepstool. Unfortunately the Linux foundation, instead of focusing on Linux wants to change our language under the banner of 'diversity and inclusivity' by banning words.

Master/Slave, valid engineering terms, out. Retarding, nope. I imagine, delayed is also frowned upon.

Blacklist is not allowed. Whitelisting is also racist. Black anything is a nono.

How about brown, yellow, pink, rainbow or French? If powwow is out, what about atlatl? Taco? Fecund? Snigger? Rotund, short, pig, dumb or smart? Random, nuts, anal, or banal and snigger because it may hurt some idiot's feelings?

The hardest thing about coding is coming up with descriptive names. What a bunch of losers.

What words do you think should not be allowed by this shining beam of freedom, the Linux Foundation?

Aug 29 · 4 months ago · 👍 jsreed5, adam, vzsg, bsj38381, gim · 🤔 2

64 Comments ↓

Since when master/slave are engineering terms? In what field was this pair used, outside of IT/CS?

Moreover this particular pair is pretty much *un*descriptive and there are many better alternatives (vide: main/copy/replica, primary/secondary, supervisor/worker, conductor/agent, etc.)

The fact that it was used, does not make it valid or even right.

Not sure what triggered you, but sometimes it's really better to just step back and think that maybe we're not doing things the right way.

Ok, in engineering it communicates a very specific relationship between devices or tools. primary or secondary just does not cut it. And even that indicates primacy and second-tierness, as does supervisor and subordinates -- an unequal power relationship that surely offends you.

hmm. In photography you slave a flash to the master that you control. Nothing to do with humans, just a word. What is triggering you? Afraid that your inner racist will come out?

And that is exactly the problem -- instead of addressing important issues where they belong, sexualizing or imbuing with race hatred, perfectly innocent words in unrelated areas.

I think the criticism here is the focus on naming things instead of patching kernel bugs.

it's either photo print or photo copy, tbh it's the first time I'm hearing about master when it comes to the plate.

Any other usage examples?

Triggering me? nothing, I don't think they are right, or correct or descriptive enough. I can see however how they can be viewed. I generally think that if we can be better - we should.

Photo print and copy have nothing to do with my example, a flash which is triggered remotely by the firing of the manually controlled unit, without being wired, using a light sensor. Or a slave -- so much easier to say.

As a Slav, my people had been enslaved for millenia. That is where the word SLAVE comes from.

It's a word. Not using it does not make you a good person

As also a slav and except for inner slavery, there wasn't really slavery here for the last 1000 years, and tbh, I clearly wouldn't be able to track my family tree that far.

Not sure what the point you're making though, should we change the terminology to MASTER-SLAV? (fine by me)

I think, in certain sutations, "master" and "slave" can be exactly the right terms to describe two components. The word "slave" implies a total lack of free will or agency: the slave does work on behalf of the master, but it will only ever do work that is explicity assigned and sanctioned by the master, no more or less. Meanwhile, "secondary" implies the lesser component might choose of its own volition to do work that the "primary" hasn't gotten to. "Supervisor/worker" and "conductor/agent" have a similar implication to me. In the context of people, "master/slave" is defiinitionally dehumanizing, but in the context of machines, sometimes that's simply the correct characterization.

What frustrates me more is sunsetting the word "master" even when it doesn't imply a "slave." I'm thinking in particular about git (and GitHub) renaming the default branch to "main." A "master" doesn't always imply a slave; it could imply a disciple or a student, someone who regards the master as the source of truth and wants to gain knowledge or wisdom from him. That's not offensive. And as far as I'm aware, git has never used the word "slave" to describe the relationship between the default branch and non-default branches of a repo.

Edit: @gim I'm not an engineer, so I'm not very familiar with the history of how certain terms are used in various fields. But another example of "master/slave" terminology is in automobiles: a master cylinder and slave cylinders are used to control hydraulic pressure for things like the brakes and the clutch.

My point is that words are words, and if you find yourself banning them because some fool may be offended, the fool is you. Especially when your work is suffering while you focus on words.

Surely you are as daft as your last comment implies, @gim.... Master is ok with you but slave not?

One will no longer achieve a master's degree and instead will get a conductor degree. The small world of light and heavy rail becomes confused when they go to hire and find thousands of conductors. Orchestras everywhere turn to AI to weed out resumes of unqualified STEM professionals. Mass chaos, mass hysteria.

Master is ok with you but slave not?

No it's not, I was exagerrating deliberately, but the truth is I do have trouble understanding, and here's why:

In most companies, there are coding guidelines. Where I worked, we had a tooling that checked many things regarding the structure, and although you could push changes, that didn't pass, you wouldn't be able to merge them into dev/rc/main.

That tooling also included some swear words (in various languages) and others, that could be considered offensive.

(Yes, it was causing some weird false-poses at times).

So IMHO sticking to wording is basically equal to following guidelines - you're not following guidelines - your code don't gets merged. Simple as that.

I guess my garbage collector known as ShitCan would not get merged

That is why I would fo (and have done) everything possible to avoid working in a place like that. To avoid that kind of slavery.

@jsreed nice example, didn't know that one (we call it "główny" which is basically "main")

As for the software, tbf, when we were switching to git (and that was looong before github introduced such change, tbf - I don't think I even *heard* about GH back then) dropping name master was one of the first things we did, even prior to migration, cause that name doesn't have much sense in most companies.

You usually have release branch, pre-release, and testing and/or devel + feature-branches.

I make ot a point to create a master branch in all projects. They don't get to tell me what names I can use, because I am not a slave.

@stack Bubble needs more comment reactions besides "thanks", as this one (shitcan) honestly made me giggle

@stack Language policing by idiots makes it impossible to print completely inoffensive sentences like “Niggardly naturalists niggle over nature’s nuances.”

I'm very out of the loop with this, when did people get upset over some words that the Linux foundation are using for their stuff? I swear, there's always that jerk that actively gets offended over really small stuff.

It's virtue signaling, along with banning Russian contributors (as if the linux kernel geeks have anything to do with decisions of their leaders), but not Americans who are even more responsible for death and destruction around the world.

Also, hiring and funding projects based on skin color and sexual preferences. Under the banner of so-called inclusivity.

I need ro give FreeBSD another try

I think there's a conflict between how engineers use words and how words are used in society and language generally. (Software) engineering is very technical and precise; words like "master" and "slave" have well-defined technical meanings. However, language in general is messy and fuzzy and word have multiple connotations and associations. When engineers use words that have an overwhelmingly negative history or meaning in the common context, we normalize them and become desensitized to the negative associations. And because we aren't robots, this normalization bleeds into the rest of our use of language. Also, if non-engineers are exposed to this kind of engineering terms, they don't have the technical context to evaluate the usage and only understand the negative connotations. The optics are bad.

I think any professional field is this way. Organic food is not the same thing as organic chemistry. A theory is a hunch in common parlance and a body of principles to explain a phenomenon to a scientist. Chemicals are evil little life destroyers to the average Joe and the components of everything to a professional researcher. Just to name a few. I have started telling strangers I sell insurance when they ask what I do. Never get follow up comments with that.

along with banning Russian contributors

tbf, that is not truth. There were people removed from MAINTAINERS file - that's pretty huge difference, afaik - contributions are still open, even by the people who were removed.

And there's also quite obvious reason. Linux Foundation is a US non-profit, and the people that were removed are associated with companies that are on the list of U.S. Office of Foreign Asset Control (a.k.a. OFAC) that "threaten the national security, foreign policy, or economy".

So if anything, complain about this one to OFAC.

I stand corrected. Damn OFAC.

What's offensive about blacklist/whitelist? Those terms don't (and never did) describe lists of people with specific skin colors. Colors aren't racist or offensive unless people really REEAALLY want to take offense and can't find something that makes sense

I agree that they are doing too much trying to ban words and that they should not do so. Sometimes they actually do improve it by using better words (although, if it is being done well, the reason for this does not have to do with racism and anti-racism), but often they do not. Banning words is not the solution.

I think @jsreed5 has good points, although "master/slave" is sometimes good words to describe something, sometimes it isn't, and better words might be used (if you have any better words, which hopefully you do, but you might not).

About GitHub renaming the default branch, I was originally opposed to it but once I understood better what they were doing and how git is working, I think it is not a problem at all (and there is also the minor benefit of "main" being shorter than "master" and starting with the same two letters). However, I think they should not have changed the name of the schema table in SQLite from SQLITE_MASTER to SQLITE_SCHEMA, even though SQLITE_SCHEMA is a better name; they should have deferred that change until major version 4, in my opinion.

Words "whitelist" and "blacklist" are not too bad, but you might want to use more specific words for the specific situation, since those compound words do not refer to colours (and if they are lists that are colours, then you should use a space, to write "white list" and "black list" instead), so you can avoid confusion by avoiding the use of confusing words in the appropriate circumstances. Blacklist is when anything is allowed (or included, etc) by default and anything explicitly listed will be blocked (or denied, excluded, etc). You might use more specific words such as "deny list", "exclusion list", "block list", etc.

Trying to eliminate hate speech and racism (which was not an issue in the first place) by banning words that may be used to do so... How asinine!

The whole renaming of groups of people over and over to assert authority over them disgusts me. So does elimination of words that remind us of horrible things... Slavery _was_ a thing, and we should not forget it. Racism still is a thing (actively practiced by the Linux Foundation's daily operations), and eliminating words like 'blacklist' does absolutely nothing to combat it.

I think "blocklist" and "allowlist" are objectively better terms. What they do is built-in to the name.

This is a list of things we block. Blocklist.

This is a list of things we allow. Allowlist.

You could argue about the equivalent for a greylist but I'd counter with any system that uses greylisting is pretty outdated. I'm looking at you, qmail+qpsmptd.

I think that you make your own best case against the point that you're making: Words are just words. Language changes over time, and always has. Certain terms fall in and out of use, for various reasons. There have always throughout human existence been people looking back and saying that others are using language incorrectly, and yet it marches forward nonetheless.

Poppycock, thine language hath never undergone nary a change, dawg. Pray thee forgiveth me for all this flapdoodle, for I am a gigglemug.

I remember learning that "decimate" meant "to reduce by ten percent." I saw people using it to instead mean "completely destroy" and thought man, those people sure look like idiots using that word so incorrectly.

You know who the idiot actually was? Me.

Language changes. The dictionary isn't a prescription, it doesn't tell us what the meaning of words should be. It's a journal that's constantly updated as words come, go, and change meaning.

Blocklist. A list of blocks in a filesystem or a memory manager.

Let me allowlist this IP address. Sounds like crap, doesn't it?

Sure, language changes -- based on need, and occasionally, forced by people with guns or whatnot.

What is the need to rename things? Too much money given to the Linux Foundation -- and now they hired some jackass genzeeer (that is what we call them now, according to the Stack Foundation) -- who cannot code, or see that Biden's crew is no longer policing language.

I noticed that many terms that were previously blocked on Google Translate are now allowed again.

Try this, in your favorite language:

"You are a C*NT".

I thought it was well known that the Linux Foundation is a Microsoft takeover effort aimed at the FSF and GNU/Linux. It should not be surprising that one of their main tactics is harassing people and starting divide and conquer fights over what words you're allowed to say, write, or think.

Indeed, friends. Ignore them and rock the words that are colors, indicate stupidity, servitude, sexual orientation, ugliness and extreme girth, if they accurately describe your technical needs. Take back the night, and don't let the bookburners erase things they don't like.

Hate speech is only that if you have hate. If you don't and someone accuses you of it, it is their problem and insecurity talking. Or perhaps, even their hate coming through.

"let me allowlist this IP address" sounds just as crap as "let me whitelist this IP address" because in both cases, verbing weirds language.

"let me add this IP address to the allowlist" sounds perfectly fine to me.

@jpjr -- blacklisting and whitelisting (possibly white-listing for some reason) are actual English words in the dictionary!

Goes back a long way, at least to McCarthy's era, amusingly enough, dealing with censorship. WRONG: recorded verb usage as early as 1702! Take that, deniers!

When they take it out of the dictionary, I may consider not using it. Until then, over my charred black body.

At no point have I said you can't use the words you want to use. Just that I prefer to use other words.

At work, whenever somebody says "blacklist" or "whitelist" - I don't correct them. I just casually use my preferred terms instead. Sometimes they switch, sometimes they don't. I don't make a fuss about it.

Language changes. That's really all there is to it. Digging your heels in and insisting on using outdated terms just makes you look like a crotchety old person. Don't be surprised when people say "yeah I'd rather not deal with this person." 🤷‍♂️

True enough!

I _am_ a crochety old person. I don't play well with others. I don't have many friends who care about political correctness and virtue signaling. All true.

I would rather not work with people who instead of focusing on work and using the clearest terminology available are offended by words like blacklisting.

It goes both ways.

The bookburners -- those who insist that the problem is words and not the intention behind them -- will huff and puff, and continue 'changing the world' by euphemizing, and wondering why racism is still around, even though Indians are now Native Americans or whatever the word of the day is.

But the Linux Kernel is not improved by renaming words in the source code

I think this whole exchange is the system working as intended.

"We don't want to use the term blacklist anymore."

"Well, I'm going to keep using it!"

"OK. See ya."

If a group makes a rule and you don't like it, then you just don't participate anymore. You can insist the group is wrong, the group can insist you're wrong, it doesn't really matter. If they make a choice you don't like then why would you stick around?

it didn't take you much time from "I don't correct them. I just casually use my preferred terms instead. Sometimes they switch, sometimes they don't. I don't make a fuss about it." to getting rid of people not using your preferred terms. :O

I don't have a problem with replacing old terms with new terms if it has any purpose, however, I can't see why changing them makes sense. Real issues aren't going away because you change already inoffensive terms and then distance yourself from people who dare to still use them.

If I find myself arguing over naming something -- often happened in pair programming -- I don't appreciate choosing a politically correct and less descriptive name. Naming is hard. I'd rather work with someone who cares more about important things, which are definitely not politics for me. We all make choices. We all gravitate towards what we are comfortable with.

There is an attack on sensibility, with preference to not offending imaginary people at the expense of everything else. Opportunists pop up to become spokespeople of such victim groups. Tax money is spent. It's catchy. It's been going on for a long time.

@stack Hearing the word “unalive” makes me want to unalive people.

YouTube’s censorship of the word “kill” via demonetization has been a disaster for language.

Real issues aren't going away because you change already inoffensive terms and then distance yourself from people who dare to still use them.

I thought if we changed crippled to handicapped to disabled to handicapable to differently abled we could make people walk again through word magic.

Hopefully youtube will follow google translate with decensoring words. I don't see how k*ll changes anything.

There are some scary precedents.

Toll collectors renamed themselves 'Bridge and Tunnel Officers', then unionized and demanded guns, which were given.

you know maybe one day we'll all sit down and decide "actually blacklist is fine."

but if someone asks me to use blocklist instead - it takes zero effort for me to change terms.

You must be smarter than I am. I would be looking at that every day, or typing blacklist because it makes sense.

That's probably it, yeah.

Perhaps you are sarcastic, but most of my coding time is trying to remember names for things and searching definitions and invocations, which is very hard if you can't remember names. Then you have contortions like 'it is not whitelist... oh, permitlist? allowlist? no, allowedlist. Damn these pc jerks.'

which are definitely not politics for me.

Everything is political. Choosing mastodon or bluesky over X is politics. Choosing matrix over Whatsapp is politics. Choosing Gemini over Facebook is politics.

I don't want to be the bearer of the bad news, but if you haven't noticed yet, pretty much large part of OSS is leftist.

We all make choices. We all gravitate towards what we are comfortable with.

And that's a nice summary and tagline.

Software (especially OSS) is not a democracy, it's an ecosystem existing between maintainers, contributors and users.

You don't like rules enforced by maintainers? Fork the project. Gain support. Build.

I would hope there is more to kernel programming than blindly following Democrats or Republicans when it comes to naming an array.

This conversation is indeed retarding me in every way. Thank you for participating.

int BigBeautifulVariable1

bool BigBeautifulVariable2

char BigBeautifulVariable3

etc

Big may offend little people and those volumetrically challenged.

You are hereby canceled.

Triggers my sizemophobia. This code is hate speech.

Also an affront to ugly bastards like me

People can use words such as "whitelist", "blacklist", "allow list", etc that they want to do, if it does not result in an unnecessary confusion. If you want to avoid a word and use something else instead, OK, but don't force everyone to do, and don't ban words. Furthermore, you should consider the consequences before changing an existing program; there might be significant advantages to avoid changing it even if the new word is otherwise better.

Also, a flight recorder is sometimes called a "black box" but it shouldn't be called that, because it is orange and is not black.

@flipperzero, wow, that is something to bring up with your therapist. We are an inclusive community, I hope, and anger at people expressing a negative opinion about banning words is not necessary.

What -is- the importance of retaining

This is shifting the burden.

Everything is political.

No it isn't. This cliché is used to smuggle in ontological premises. I don’t believe the gravity holding me to this planet or the beauty of a sunset is mediated exclusively through socially constructed power relations. I do believe a concept that encompasses everything explains nothing.

@stacks Speak for yourself, cut it out with your bad faith baits and one-sided hurled projections if you’re gonna attempt discourse. Get a clue, and lot of talk for someone that can’t handle shifts in dialects of jargon. Christ, what a lack of perspective and self-awareness.

WTF! I stated my case, listened to arguments I don't agree with -- some reasonable, countered some points made and even thanked participants I disagree with.

What's your problem? Someone doesn't agree with your idea of what's fair?

Your response is completely inappropriate.

@flipperzero Let's keep it civil? Your long comment above was unpublished so you can move it elsewhere if you want.

Note that my comment expressed disdain for a questionable policy of a corporation.

On a personal level if someone were to ask me to use or not use certain words, of course I would accommodate! As a person with some cognitive differences I understand that people have different and sometimes hard to explain needs.

So let us avoid ad homineming here.

Perhaps you are sarcastic, but most of my coding time is trying to remember names for things and searching definitions and invocations, which is very hard if you can't remember names.

@stack You just made me think it’s going to be really funny when someone throws a fit about the function names in an interpreted language and breaks compatibility with 25 years of code, and it will be a nightmare to fix because it’s not like you can just fork a legacy compiler. Web servers all update to the new -x.0 release and suddenly nothing works because most people weren’t paying attention to these stupid arguments.

Someone will be furious about preg_replace() since it could be interpreted as the language spec calling attention to or endorsing white nationalist conspiracies about birth rates and great replacement, and now every PHP script using regex replacement is broken until someone manually updates every single installation with:

function preg_replace($pattern, $replcement, $subject, $limit=-1, $count=null) {
  return new_retardedness($pattern, $replcement, $subject, $limit, $count);
}

Not especially difficult, but really, really stupid.

function names in an interpreted language and breaks compatibility with 25 years of code

if your deployment does not bind to a specific version of compiler + libs (or in this case specific version of an interpreter), I would argue your actions are questionable in first place ;)

Some superior languages (cough... Common Lisp) allow you to alias symbol-names as part of package importation.

lol. lmao even.

keep this garbage on r/conservative, not here.

Interesting that pushing against authoritarian word banning (and bookburning) is somehow 'conservative'.

I assure you I am not a conservative or a liberal for that matter. I just don't like bull.

And while I appreciate your suggestion, I don't think so. I am glad you find this amusing. To each his/her/their own!