Indeed, I think you're correct in this. You'll find two arguments against this in the wild – "we've always used that terminology," and "it's the only way to de

Indeed, I think you're correct in this. You'll find two arguments against this in the wild – "we've always used that terminology," and "it's the only way to describe the relationship." I don't think either are that convincing. I used to be pretty clear that I thought this was a stupid thing to complain about, until one day when I was presenting a small distributed software project to a group including non-technical people. I explained about the 'master' and the 'slaves', and at the end someone asked 'why did you use those terms? Isn't there something nicer we can use?'. I realised that they weren't complaining because they were offended or anything, but because slavery is sort of not a nice thing to talk about – the fact that I was used to those terms in a technical context maybe blinded me a bit to the fact that others might find them distasteful. They were changed, everyone was happier, nothing was lost.