6 ms·

Good for antirez. We all know what master-slave mean in a computing context and separate it from distant historical meanings, just as we don't get offended by `

Good for antirez. We all know what master-slave mean in a computing context and separate it from distant historical meanings, just as we don't get offended by `parent.kill(child)`. Some people get moral enjoyment from finding ways to feign offense... at best, it is a waste of time to indulge much of these false complaints. Our goodness and values show in our worldly actions.

Turing_Machine 8y ago
Not to mention SIGABRT.
- kawsper 8y ago
  There have been discussions about that, glibc had this written in its docs about the abort() function since the 90s: > 25.7.4 Aborting a Program... Future Change Warning: Proposed Federal censorship regulations may prohibit us from giving you information about the possibility of calling this function. We would be required to say that this is not an acceptable way of terminating a program. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/09/gnu_glic_abort_stallman/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/09/gnu_glic_abort_stal...
smachiz 8y ago
I mean, I don't disagree with your premise that very few people are actually offended, but this is one of those low-effort, doesn't-matter changes so why not do it? If it does offend anyone at all, why not change it? If it might offend anyone at all, why not change it? It's not like we're redefining the color blue to appease red-ists. There's a dozen synonyms that convey the same relationship construct as master/slave without using the word slave. It's not the hill to die on, or take a stand on.
- strken 8y ago
  He touches on something very important when he describes the change as being "for Americans to make peace with their past" and says "it focuses on formalities, but actually it has a real root of prejudice against others". I'd hazard a guess that most of the people who are offended are offended because they feel guilty, and not because they're harmed by the terminology. Maybe those people should feel guilty. Maybe, as a European, he doesn't want American guilt to control the way he uses language.
- menacingly 8y ago
  "If it might offend anyone at all, why not change it?" is simultaneously gracious, well-meaning, and completely oblivious to the actual mechanisms that drive these offense debates. It doesn't offend anyone. If it does, it's easily cleared up with a broader understanding of the english language. That doesn't matter, though, because it doesn't offend anyone. The hunt for these righteous stances _is_ the goal. You don't change it, because 1) it's a weird bid to control the behavior of someone else, 2) you didn't gain anything. the priesthood wants to find your dirty stain, shine the light of an extremely flexible outrage on it, make an example of your submission to their humbling cleansing, then move on. All you've done is apologize to the no one who was actually harmed, add fuel for the next imaginary incident, and waste your time.
- iamwil 8y ago
  "I originally copied the terms from MySQL, and now they are the way we call things in Redis, and since I do not believe in this battle (I’ll tell you later why), to change the documentation, deprecate the API and add a new one, change the INFO fields, just to make a subset of people that care about those things more happy, do not make sense to me." Sounds like it's more work than you imagine.
- Twisol 8y ago
  > this is one of those low-effort, doesn't matter changes antirez, at least, says otherwise. > [...] to change the documentation, deprecate the API and add a new one, change the INFO fields, [...]
  - smachiz 8y ago
    Please - it's a find/replace. The API is a bit stickier, but they can of course just map the old 'slave' designation to a new call.
    - SteveNuts 8y ago
      Feel free to submit a PR, just make sure it passes all the tests!
    - devmunchies 8y ago
      what about log history? If I want to find a history of slave errors I need to account for both words? Its not worth it.
- wskinner 8y ago
  > If it does offend anyone at all, why not change it? If it might offend anyone at all, why not change it? Did you read the article? He answers this question. He devotes the last four paragraphs of the article to exactly that. Edit: tl;dr is that a) it's not as simple a technical fix as you might think and b) it's not just a technical issue.
  - smachiz 8y ago
    With no compelling reasons... If we instead called it Guard and Concentration Camp Prisoner would more people feel differently? Yes, if we go to the fringes there are ridiculous things that people can get upset by - but this doesn't seem like one of them. There are plenty of words that are just as descriptive that we can use in place of master/slave at literally zero cost to clarity.
    - meowface 8y ago
      "master" and "slave" are abstract concepts that don't just apply to humans or even organisms at all, while "concentration camp prisoner" and "concentration camp guard" are very specific human concepts. If it took no effort to make this change, this discussion probably wouldn't even be an issue in the first place since many project owners would change the terminology just to stop the whining and discussion. But it's not that easy, so many people have decided to not bend over backwards for every term that could possibly be twisted into being considered offensive when taken out of context, including "master / slave", "whitelist / blacklist", "forking", and "killer app". Yes, people have taken issue with all of those terms [1] and will probably take issue with even more if developers start to appease them. This kind of thing is a slippery slope. [1] https://twitter.com/andrestaltz/status/1030200563802230786 https://twitter.com/andrestaltz/status/1030200563802230786
- digitalnomade 8y ago
  Because as Antirez pointed out, it is not that simple. One has to change documentation, API, code. It cascades from there.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Turing_Machine 8y ago
  > If it does offend anyone at all, why not change it? If it might offend anyone at all, why not change it? Because giving in to thought-policing bullies is always a bad idea. Note how quickly the wannabe bully in this case went from demanding the change to calling the maintainer every vile name in the book.
- edejong 8y ago
  Because it reeks of voluntary self-censorship pressed by political correctness? Also, where to draw the line? Should we rename Brainfuck? Is white-space PC?
  - evil-olive 8y ago
    > Is white-space PC? There has been a push to rename "whitelist" and "blacklist": https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/51088/alternative-term-to-blacklist-and-whitelist https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/51088/alternativ...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- the8472 8y ago
  Because being offended is cheap and it being real is unverifiable. Thus there is a cost asymmetry which makes it trivially exploitable. > It's not like we're redefining the color blue to appease red-ists. I am deeply offended that your source control denigrates people from non-conventional families[0]. Please purge this insult from the internet on my behalf. [0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/git#Etymology_1 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/git#Etymology_1
- savethefuture 8y ago
  Because at what point do you stop and who dictates what offends people and what does not. It is all opinion based and is a never ending catastrophe of ever changing definitions and verbiage. This is just more distractions from what really matters, writing coding and completing the task at hand. Like you said, "one of those low-effort, doesn't-matter changes", so why change it?
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  > I mean, I don't disagree with your premise that very few people are actually offended, but this is one of those low-effort, doesn't-matter changes so why not do it? Not doing what this particular brand of moralising busybodies wants sends a message to them, other busybodies and more importantly everyone else involved with Redis that this organisation will not instantly roll over to pressure. If you remember the Drupal controversy where some activists were trying to get someone expelled from the community for their sex life the maintainers rolled over until over a hundred contributors and sponsors said to reverse the decision or they’d fork Drupal. The principle is the same. If you pay the Danegeld you will never be rid of the Dane. If you don’t feel like giving a mile, consider very strongly whether to give an inch.
stcredzero 8y ago
Some people get moral enjoyment from finding ways to feign offense... at best, it is a waste of time to indulge much of these false complaints. It has become a way to get the effects of political terrorism while avoiding the risk and backlash of actual terrorism. The real purpose at this point isn't to actually convince or cow people into obedience. It's low-risk practice for training radicals, and any political movement seeking rapid change needs about 10% of its membership to be radicals. Even short of violence, human politics boils down to "bigger army diplomacy."
evil-olive 8y ago
> just as we don't get offended by `parent.kill(child)` I think this is an excellent analogy. The Linux OOM killer even has a log message about sacrificing children: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/282155/what-is-the-out-of-memory-message-sacrifice-child https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/282155/what-is-the-... And that, AFAIK, isn't part of the Linux kernel API/ABI, so it could be changed more easily than Redis' SLAVEOF command could. But it's clear from context what it's referring to.
rhcom2 8y ago
> Some people get moral enjoyment from finding ways to feign offense Why not assume good faith? Surely you can make an argument against changing technical terms without assuming the person bringing up the changes is just trolling.
- Turing_Machine 8y ago
  People who are arguing in good faith don't start calling their opponents vile names after one exchange.
- adrianmonk 8y ago
  Why not assume good faith on the part of the people who used the terms "master" and "slave"?
  - rhcom2 8y ago
    The person mentioned in the post obviously didn't assume that after they started name calling but I think you could assume good faith usage of those words and still have a problem with it.
    - wang_li 8y ago
      >... I think you could assume good faith usage of those words and still have a problem with it. One should also understand that not all countries have the same political activists and race-baiters that the US has and therefore the words master and slave don't carry the same baggage as they do in the US.
      - rhcom2 8y ago
        Master/slave doesn't carry baggage because of political activists and race-baiters but because of the US' history of slavery/racism.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
jachee 8y ago
> Our goodness and values show in our worldly actions. So, how hard would it be to sed -ri 's/slave/receiver/g; s/master/sender/g' redis_source/ ...to make this product better for more people and take nothing away from it? That would be a "worldly action" to show some goodness.
- platinumrad 8y ago
  A huge diff that doesn't mean anything is a nontrivial cost. Documentation would also have to be changed and articles would have to be updated. Deprecating something, even terminology, should not be done lightly.
  - jachee 8y ago
    "That doesn't mean anything to white people", you mean? Edit: HN is Reddit now. "Downvote if you disagree."
    - aiven 8y ago
      this is how voting works tho
      - meowface 8y ago
        In practice, but not on paper. HN guidelines forbid that sort of voting behavior.
        grzm 8y ago
        There is no guideline on HN forbidding down voting for disagreement. 'dang as recently as a month ago reiterated this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17666145 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17666145
        meowface 8y ago
        Ah sorry, not sure where I got that idea from, then. I may've been confused by various subreddit mods establishing rules along the lines of "the downvote is not a disagree button".
bazeblackwood 8y ago
Given that the explicit "master" and "slave" relationship definition lacks any other common meanings in any other technical field of English (that I'm aware of), I'm not quite sure I understand your point. The hierarchy of "parent" and "child", at least, is used for terminology in other fields, e.g. euphemistically in psychology, for relationships that fit a particular behavior pattern, even when the participants aren't actually related. Likewise, I'm sure the programmers responsible for the "parent"-"child" metaphor, didn't consider all the possible pseudo-language this method might generate. Just as no one might imagine `chokeAndDieOn(kernel)`. On the other hand, "master"-"slave" is taken from a pretty explicitly provocative (and negative) situation that still exists in many forms in today's world and was designed as a metaphor explicitly for the relationship, as opposed to being incidental, like your example. However, if what you say is your firm belief, then you surely wouldn't mind `"dominatrix"-"submissive" databases` or `"torturer"-"victim" databases`?
- NikolaeVarius 8y ago
  Why not?
- the8472 8y ago
  > or `"torturer"-"victim" databases`? Torture-testing. Victim threads. Everything has its use.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- platinumrad 8y ago
  "dom-sub" makes a lot of sense, honestly; catch me using that in my next project. I would object to "torturer-victim" because it doesn't properly describe the relationship.
  - bazeblackwood 8y ago
    No, not "dom", "dominatrix". And is your project a popular open-source project? Or will you be committing to a code base at a large corporation? Feel free to screenshot the pull request when you do, otherwise I'll have to assume you're casually bluffing.

Turing_Machine 8y ago

Not to mention SIGABRT.

kawsper 8y ago
There have been discussions about that, glibc had this written in its docs about the abort() function since the 90s: > 25.7.4 Aborting a Program... Future Change Warning: Proposed Federal censorship regulations may prohibit us from giving you information about the possibility of calling this function. We would be required to say that this is not an acceptable way of terminating a program. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/09/gnu_glic_abort_stallman/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/09/gnu_glic_abort_stal...

smachiz 8y ago

I mean, I don't disagree with your premise that very few people are actually offended, but this is one of those low-effort, doesn't-matter changes so why not do it? If it does offend anyone at all, why not change it? If it might offend anyone at all, why not change it? It's not like we're redefining the color blue to appease red-ists. There's a dozen synonyms that convey the same relationship construct as master/slave without using the word slave. It's not the hill to die on, or take a stand on.

strken 8y ago
He touches on something very important when he describes the change as being "for Americans to make peace with their past" and says "it focuses on formalities, but actually it has a real root of prejudice against others". I'd hazard a guess that most of the people who are offended are offended because they feel guilty, and not because they're harmed by the terminology. Maybe those people should feel guilty. Maybe, as a European, he doesn't want American guilt to control the way he uses language.
menacingly 8y ago
"If it might offend anyone at all, why not change it?" is simultaneously gracious, well-meaning, and completely oblivious to the actual mechanisms that drive these offense debates. It doesn't offend anyone. If it does, it's easily cleared up with a broader understanding of the english language. That doesn't matter, though, because it doesn't offend anyone. The hunt for these righteous stances _is_ the goal. You don't change it, because 1) it's a weird bid to control the behavior of someone else, 2) you didn't gain anything. the priesthood wants to find your dirty stain, shine the light of an extremely flexible outrage on it, make an example of your submission to their humbling cleansing, then move on. All you've done is apologize to the no one who was actually harmed, add fuel for the next imaginary incident, and waste your time.
iamwil 8y ago
"I originally copied the terms from MySQL, and now they are the way we call things in Redis, and since I do not believe in this battle (I’ll tell you later why), to change the documentation, deprecate the API and add a new one, change the INFO fields, just to make a subset of people that care about those things more happy, do not make sense to me." Sounds like it's more work than you imagine.
Twisol 8y ago
> this is one of those low-effort, doesn't matter changes antirez, at least, says otherwise. > [...] to change the documentation, deprecate the API and add a new one, change the INFO fields, [...]
- smachiz 8y ago
  Please - it's a find/replace. The API is a bit stickier, but they can of course just map the old 'slave' designation to a new call.
  - SteveNuts 8y ago
    Feel free to submit a PR, just make sure it passes all the tests!
  - devmunchies 8y ago
    what about log history? If I want to find a history of slave errors I need to account for both words? Its not worth it.
wskinner 8y ago
> If it does offend anyone at all, why not change it? If it might offend anyone at all, why not change it? Did you read the article? He answers this question. He devotes the last four paragraphs of the article to exactly that. Edit: tl;dr is that a) it's not as simple a technical fix as you might think and b) it's not just a technical issue.
- smachiz 8y ago
  With no compelling reasons... If we instead called it Guard and Concentration Camp Prisoner would more people feel differently? Yes, if we go to the fringes there are ridiculous things that people can get upset by - but this doesn't seem like one of them. There are plenty of words that are just as descriptive that we can use in place of master/slave at literally zero cost to clarity.
  - meowface 8y ago
    "master" and "slave" are abstract concepts that don't just apply to humans or even organisms at all, while "concentration camp prisoner" and "concentration camp guard" are very specific human concepts. If it took no effort to make this change, this discussion probably wouldn't even be an issue in the first place since many project owners would change the terminology just to stop the whining and discussion. But it's not that easy, so many people have decided to not bend over backwards for every term that could possibly be twisted into being considered offensive when taken out of context, including "master / slave", "whitelist / blacklist", "forking", and "killer app". Yes, people have taken issue with all of those terms [1] and will probably take issue with even more if developers start to appease them. This kind of thing is a slippery slope. [1] https://twitter.com/andrestaltz/status/1030200563802230786 https://twitter.com/andrestaltz/status/1030200563802230786
digitalnomade 8y ago
Because as Antirez pointed out, it is not that simple. One has to change documentation, API, code. It cascades from there.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Turing_Machine 8y ago
> If it does offend anyone at all, why not change it? If it might offend anyone at all, why not change it? Because giving in to thought-policing bullies is always a bad idea. Note how quickly the wannabe bully in this case went from demanding the change to calling the maintainer every vile name in the book.
edejong 8y ago
Because it reeks of voluntary self-censorship pressed by political correctness? Also, where to draw the line? Should we rename Brainfuck? Is white-space PC?
- evil-olive 8y ago
  > Is white-space PC? There has been a push to rename "whitelist" and "blacklist": https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/51088/alternative-term-to-blacklist-and-whitelist https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/51088/alternativ...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
the8472 8y ago
Because being offended is cheap and it being real is unverifiable. Thus there is a cost asymmetry which makes it trivially exploitable. > It's not like we're redefining the color blue to appease red-ists. I am deeply offended that your source control denigrates people from non-conventional families[0]. Please purge this insult from the internet on my behalf. [0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/git#Etymology_1 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/git#Etymology_1
savethefuture 8y ago
Because at what point do you stop and who dictates what offends people and what does not. It is all opinion based and is a never ending catastrophe of ever changing definitions and verbiage. This is just more distractions from what really matters, writing coding and completing the task at hand. Like you said, "one of those low-effort, doesn't-matter changes", so why change it?
barry-cotter 8y ago
> I mean, I don't disagree with your premise that very few people are actually offended, but this is one of those low-effort, doesn't-matter changes so why not do it? Not doing what this particular brand of moralising busybodies wants sends a message to them, other busybodies and more importantly everyone else involved with Redis that this organisation will not instantly roll over to pressure. If you remember the Drupal controversy where some activists were trying to get someone expelled from the community for their sex life the maintainers rolled over until over a hundred contributors and sponsors said to reverse the decision or they’d fork Drupal. The principle is the same. If you pay the Danegeld you will never be rid of the Dane. If you don’t feel like giving a mile, consider very strongly whether to give an inch.

stcredzero 8y ago

Some people get moral enjoyment from finding ways to feign offense... at best, it is a waste of time to indulge much of these false complaints. It has become a way to get the effects of political terrorism while avoiding the risk and backlash of actual terrorism. The real purpose at this point isn't to actually convince or cow people into obedience. It's low-risk practice for training radicals, and any political movement seeking rapid change needs about 10% of its membership to be radicals. Even short of violence, human politics boils down to "bigger army diplomacy."

evil-olive 8y ago

> just as we don't get offended by `parent.kill(child)` I think this is an excellent analogy. The Linux OOM killer even has a log message about sacrificing children: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/282155/what-is-the-out-of-memory-message-sacrifice-child https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/282155/what-is-the-... And that, AFAIK, isn't part of the Linux kernel API/ABI, so it could be changed more easily than Redis' SLAVEOF command could. But it's clear from context what it's referring to.

rhcom2 8y ago

> Some people get moral enjoyment from finding ways to feign offense Why not assume good faith? Surely you can make an argument against changing technical terms without assuming the person bringing up the changes is just trolling.

Turing_Machine 8y ago
People who are arguing in good faith don't start calling their opponents vile names after one exchange.
adrianmonk 8y ago
Why not assume good faith on the part of the people who used the terms "master" and "slave"?
- rhcom2 8y ago
  The person mentioned in the post obviously didn't assume that after they started name calling but I think you could assume good faith usage of those words and still have a problem with it.
  - wang_li 8y ago
    >... I think you could assume good faith usage of those words and still have a problem with it. One should also understand that not all countries have the same political activists and race-baiters that the US has and therefore the words master and slave don't carry the same baggage as they do in the US.
    - rhcom2 8y ago
      Master/slave doesn't carry baggage because of political activists and race-baiters but because of the US' history of slavery/racism.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]

jachee 8y ago

> Our goodness and values show in our worldly actions. So, how hard would it be to sed -ri 's/slave/receiver/g; s/master/sender/g' redis_source/ ...to make this product better for more people and take nothing away from it? That would be a "worldly action" to show some goodness.

platinumrad 8y ago
A huge diff that doesn't mean anything is a nontrivial cost. Documentation would also have to be changed and articles would have to be updated. Deprecating something, even terminology, should not be done lightly.
- jachee 8y ago
  "That doesn't mean anything to white people", you mean? Edit: HN is Reddit now. "Downvote if you disagree."
  - aiven 8y ago
    this is how voting works tho
    - meowface 8y ago
      In practice, but not on paper. HN guidelines forbid that sort of voting behavior.
      - grzm 8y ago
        There is no guideline on HN forbidding down voting for disagreement. 'dang as recently as a month ago reiterated this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17666145 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17666145
        meowface 8y ago
        Ah sorry, not sure where I got that idea from, then. I may've been confused by various subreddit mods establishing rules along the lines of "the downvote is not a disagree button".

bazeblackwood 8y ago

Given that the explicit "master" and "slave" relationship definition lacks any other common meanings in any other technical field of English (that I'm aware of), I'm not quite sure I understand your point. The hierarchy of "parent" and "child", at least, is used for terminology in other fields, e.g. euphemistically in psychology, for relationships that fit a particular behavior pattern, even when the participants aren't actually related. Likewise, I'm sure the programmers responsible for the "parent"-"child" metaphor, didn't consider all the possible pseudo-language this method might generate. Just as no one might imagine `chokeAndDieOn(kernel)`. On the other hand, "master"-"slave" is taken from a pretty explicitly provocative (and negative) situation that still exists in many forms in today's world and was designed as a metaphor explicitly for the relationship, as opposed to being incidental, like your example. However, if what you say is your firm belief, then you surely wouldn't mind `"dominatrix"-"submissive" databases` or `"torturer"-"victim" databases`?

NikolaeVarius 8y ago
Why not?
the8472 8y ago
> or `"torturer"-"victim" databases`? Torture-testing. Victim threads. Everything has its use.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
platinumrad 8y ago
"dom-sub" makes a lot of sense, honestly; catch me using that in my next project. I would object to "torturer-victim" because it doesn't properly describe the relationship.
- bazeblackwood 8y ago
  No, not "dom", "dominatrix". And is your project a popular open-source project? Or will you be committing to a code base at a large corporation? Feel free to screenshot the pull request when you do, otherwise I'll have to assume you're casually bluffing.