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> Buildbot: $15,000. Buildbot is a continuous build and integration system which has been immensely valuable to Mozilla over the past few years. Their award wil

> Buildbot: $15,000. Buildbot is a continuous build and integration system which has been immensely valuable to Mozilla over the past few years. Their award will be used to remove the term “slave” from all documentation, Such a valuable use of donations!

STRiDEX 11y ago
Not defending the absurdity of removing/changing words for sensitivity, but it is in quite a few documents. https://github.com/buildbot/buildbot/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=slave https://github.com/buildbot/buildbot/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q...
- jonknee 11y ago
  I think the OP was insinuating that a search and replace for the word slave is probably not a $15,000 task.
  - scrollaway 11y ago
    That, and maybe also that some of us who donated to Mozilla are disappointed to see money going towards political correctness.
    - Apocryphon 11y ago
      They've still got a project named Bro, so maybe they're equal opportunity contrarians.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
csense 11y ago
Once upon a time, the city of Los Angeles asked hard drive sellers not to use the "master/slave" terminology because someone made a discrimination complaint. [1] http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/11/26/master.term.reut/ http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/11/26/master.term.reut/
scrollaway 11y ago
Oh they're not alone in that absurdity. See for example symmetric BS in Django: https://github.com/django/django/pull/2692 https://github.com/django/django/pull/2692 Welcome to the "fear of offence" culture. Should coin a term for that - offendiphobic? Edit: I'd like to point out to the silent downvoters here that there's legitimate concerns being raised in this subthread about money being wasted on political correctness, which are not being addressed by any of you. If you are unable to give a counterpoint, you should rethink your position instead of downvoting based on emotions.
- spikels 11y ago
  It is no secret that both Mozilla and Django have a strong politically correct / social justice culture. This makes the two organizations more compatible.
- hackuser 11y ago
  I'm a downvoter: I find arguments like this one to be ideological rants and not valuable. For every person and in every culture, offending people is considered wrong. To suggest that it doesn't matter is not a serious argument. Apparently 'slave' doesn't offend you. It doesn't offend me either (I remember being a little uncomfortable with it long ago, when I first encountered it, but I don't notice it now). But for me to say that therefore it is not offensive to others would be ignorant and self-centered, as if the world revolves around my views and experiences. If others say they are offended then I respect that; I hope they would respect my concerns if I was offended. Also, a common cause of discrimination is due to honest ignorance on the part of people in the dominant group. Like all humans, they are blind to things that they don't experience themselves; for example, consider law enforcement discrimination against minorities. It's happened for decades or centuries, but wasn't taken seriously until we actually had film of it due to the spread of cameras. That's another good reason to think that whether or not something bothers me is not evidence of whether it offends others. Finally, the dominant culture in the U.S. was built at a time of widespread, accepted discrimination, and many artefacts of that time persist. People may get tired of seeing so much of it being challenged and changed, from school buildings named after slave holders; Confederate flags; and movie casts, company executives, etc. being almost all white and mostly male, etc. But being tired of the challenge and change, rather than of the discrimination, is a 'first world' problem, so to speak.
Apocryphon 11y ago
You left out "also to make improvements so Buildbot works better in the Amazon EC2 cloud". Do you honestly think that the will spend even a majority, let alone all, of the $15k on a search and replace operation?
- scrollaway 11y ago
  Open question: If this is a search & replace operation, why does it need to be mentioned in a $15k grant at all? To me, this is one of two things. Either Mozilla is saying "We'll give you money, but you gotta get rid of words we don't like", or they're actually spending significant efforts on political correctness. Both outcomes are frankly disheartening. I will no longer be donating to Mozilla. They're spreading themselves thin as it is, they don't have the resources to throw away money on political pointlessness.
  - Apocryphon 11y ago
    Maybe they want to draw attention away from their use of EC2.
  - brighteyes 11y ago
    It's a documentation change, but even documentation changes need time and effort to be done properly. That's why this hasn't happened yet - everyone was on board, but no one actually stepped up to do the work, until now. Not a lot of work - it's not a significant part of the grant to buildbot, and completely insignificant in the big picture of the other grants. I can understand if you personally don't consider any efforts on such a topic worthwhile, and respect you for your position. But a lot of people do care about it, buildbot has wanted to do it for a while, and it harms no one to finally get this accomplished.
    - scrollaway 11y ago
      > and it harms no one to finally get this accomplished Doesn't it now? See my detailed answer below [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10721003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10721003] as to why this sort of thing is actively harmful. Sad to see HN downvoting legitimate discussion left and right, though. This is as bad as reddit.
nnethercote 11y ago
Mozilla gave out $503,000, only $15,000 of which went to Buildbot (that's 2.9%), and only part of that money is going toward the Buildbot docs change; the rest is going towards "improvements so Buildbot works better in the Amazon EC2 cloud". It is a bit strange that the blog post listed the smallest donation first, which meant that the documentation change was the first task mentioned. But it's a tiny part of the whole picture.
- x1024 11y ago
  We judge them by the way they present themselves. This is the first item on the first listed recipient of a grant. Apparently, Mozilla think that this is the most important thing. So your argument is invalid.
x1024 11y ago
That moment when you become a victim of Poe's law... Software development is stupid and crazy now.

STRiDEX 11y ago

Not defending the absurdity of removing/changing words for sensitivity, but it is in quite a few documents. https://github.com/buildbot/buildbot/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=slave https://github.com/buildbot/buildbot/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q...

jonknee 11y ago
I think the OP was insinuating that a search and replace for the word slave is probably not a $15,000 task.
- scrollaway 11y ago
  That, and maybe also that some of us who donated to Mozilla are disappointed to see money going towards political correctness.
  - Apocryphon 11y ago
    They've still got a project named Bro, so maybe they're equal opportunity contrarians.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]

csense 11y ago

Once upon a time, the city of Los Angeles asked hard drive sellers not to use the "master/slave" terminology because someone made a discrimination complaint. [1] http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/11/26/master.term.reut/ http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/11/26/master.term.reut/

scrollaway 11y ago

Oh they're not alone in that absurdity. See for example symmetric BS in Django: https://github.com/django/django/pull/2692 https://github.com/django/django/pull/2692 Welcome to the "fear of offence" culture. Should coin a term for that - offendiphobic? Edit: I'd like to point out to the silent downvoters here that there's legitimate concerns being raised in this subthread about money being wasted on political correctness, which are not being addressed by any of you. If you are unable to give a counterpoint, you should rethink your position instead of downvoting based on emotions.

spikels 11y ago
It is no secret that both Mozilla and Django have a strong politically correct / social justice culture. This makes the two organizations more compatible.
hackuser 11y ago
I'm a downvoter: I find arguments like this one to be ideological rants and not valuable. For every person and in every culture, offending people is considered wrong. To suggest that it doesn't matter is not a serious argument. Apparently 'slave' doesn't offend you. It doesn't offend me either (I remember being a little uncomfortable with it long ago, when I first encountered it, but I don't notice it now). But for me to say that therefore it is not offensive to others would be ignorant and self-centered, as if the world revolves around my views and experiences. If others say they are offended then I respect that; I hope they would respect my concerns if I was offended. Also, a common cause of discrimination is due to honest ignorance on the part of people in the dominant group. Like all humans, they are blind to things that they don't experience themselves; for example, consider law enforcement discrimination against minorities. It's happened for decades or centuries, but wasn't taken seriously until we actually had film of it due to the spread of cameras. That's another good reason to think that whether or not something bothers me is not evidence of whether it offends others. Finally, the dominant culture in the U.S. was built at a time of widespread, accepted discrimination, and many artefacts of that time persist. People may get tired of seeing so much of it being challenged and changed, from school buildings named after slave holders; Confederate flags; and movie casts, company executives, etc. being almost all white and mostly male, etc. But being tired of the challenge and change, rather than of the discrimination, is a 'first world' problem, so to speak.

Apocryphon 11y ago

You left out "also to make improvements so Buildbot works better in the Amazon EC2 cloud". Do you honestly think that the will spend even a majority, let alone all, of the $15k on a search and replace operation?

scrollaway 11y ago
Open question: If this is a search & replace operation, why does it need to be mentioned in a $15k grant at all? To me, this is one of two things. Either Mozilla is saying "We'll give you money, but you gotta get rid of words we don't like", or they're actually spending significant efforts on political correctness. Both outcomes are frankly disheartening. I will no longer be donating to Mozilla. They're spreading themselves thin as it is, they don't have the resources to throw away money on political pointlessness.
- Apocryphon 11y ago
  Maybe they want to draw attention away from their use of EC2.
- brighteyes 11y ago
  It's a documentation change, but even documentation changes need time and effort to be done properly. That's why this hasn't happened yet - everyone was on board, but no one actually stepped up to do the work, until now. Not a lot of work - it's not a significant part of the grant to buildbot, and completely insignificant in the big picture of the other grants. I can understand if you personally don't consider any efforts on such a topic worthwhile, and respect you for your position. But a lot of people do care about it, buildbot has wanted to do it for a while, and it harms no one to finally get this accomplished.
  - scrollaway 11y ago
    > and it harms no one to finally get this accomplished Doesn't it now? See my detailed answer below [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10721003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10721003] as to why this sort of thing is actively harmful. Sad to see HN downvoting legitimate discussion left and right, though. This is as bad as reddit.

nnethercote 11y ago

Mozilla gave out $503,000, only $15,000 of which went to Buildbot (that's 2.9%), and only part of that money is going toward the Buildbot docs change; the rest is going towards "improvements so Buildbot works better in the Amazon EC2 cloud". It is a bit strange that the blog post listed the smallest donation first, which meant that the documentation change was the first task mentioned. But it's a tiny part of the whole picture.

x1024 11y ago
We judge them by the way they present themselves. This is the first item on the first listed recipient of a grant. Apparently, Mozilla think that this is the most important thing. So your argument is invalid.

x1024 11y ago

That moment when you become a victim of Poe's law... Software development is stupid and crazy now.