9 ms·

ZFS Removes References to Slavery

55 points by turrini 6y ago

ThrowawayBandit 6y ago
I invite people to read about the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the so-called Red Guards. We are getting there. Be very careful what you say and what exact terms you use.
- ngcazz 6y ago
  God forbid making concessions for the sake of empathy with people.
  - hawkice 6y ago
    I've not met someone upset about the technical term. It's possible, but it doesn't minimize slavery (more than any technical term minimizes something by making it technical), slaves only follow the master.
  - dsabanin 6y ago
    I think this is a new version of “think of the children” cliché, used to justify lots of questionable things for ages.
  - marcoperaza 6y ago
    Each individual concession seems small but the end result is that one must live life in fear of saying the littlest wrong thing, lest the angry mob come down on you. We're at the point where we can't even talk about any of these issues, only obey the barked orders of angry activists.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- tangue 6y ago
  Replying to an exaggeration by another one is not helping.
- sildur 6y ago
  Because it’s easier to do a PR removing “slave” than to stop buying cheap things made in slave workshops.
  - akerro 6y ago
    >slave workshops. It's "unpaid labour" now.
  - ianleeclark 6y ago
    Your boycott won't change anything. Is the only avenue of political change that you can see through the lens of individual consumption? I genuinely don't see boycotts as powerful as others, so maybe I'm missing something here. However, shouldn't all avenues be taken if you're attempting to change something?
    - banads 6y ago
      >maybe I'm missing something here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott#Notable_boycotts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott#Notable_boycotts You're right that boycotts without leverage experience little success, but wrong if you think they are never successful.
      - ianleeclark 6y ago
        They only work if there is a power differential in-line with a block of consumers. I don't see ZFS developers as being a large enough block to affect anything, so their suggestion largely seems to be saying, "just do nothing instead."
- epicbots878 6y ago
  This is very very good advice.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  This is such a hyperbolic response that it’s hard to actually engage with it; I’m not sure that this is helping the conversation at all.
  - ThrowawayBandit 6y ago
    This is not hyperbolic. That is what is extremely sad, and why I picked the topic I did as suggested reading: One important thing is to understand how these things start and get out of hand. Let's not bury our heads in the sand and refuse to see what is happening.
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      The reference to the Red Guards is indeed hyperbolic and extremely loaded. You are comparing someone making a technical change to a government sponsored paramilitary organization that murdered thousands of people. It’s extremely hard to engage with the conversation when your position is that one side, if not stopped, will result in mass scale murder. If I make a good faith argument for this naming change, are you going to accuse me of supporting a proto red band?
      - ThrowawayBandit 6y ago
        I'll let you read about the topic then we can discuss, but do not think that what is happening is as innocuous as a "someone making a technical change". This has already gone far beyond that and we are really already quite close to "public denunciations" or the attacks on statues/the deads, etc. as it happened then.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
        tangue 6y ago
        He's right. No fucking engineer is being thrown inside a camp starving to death so yes the comparison is hyperbolic.
- Natsu 6y ago
  This is complicated. I have zero attachment to terms like "slave" so there's no reason to hang onto them. But I feel like this drives slacktivism rather than real change, which is hard when there's literal slavery going on all over the world. See also: https://www.theclever.com/15-countries-where-slavery-is-still-legal/ https://www.theclever.com/15-countries-where-slavery-is-stil...
- ianleeclark 6y ago
  It's incredibly convenient we have a Boogeyman de jour to compare everything to. I don't quite know how the most reactionary elements of our crumbling society would vent otherwise. If history teaches us anything, it would be: violently. How else could we possibly look at the current cultural moment? Self-critically? No, never, not when we can engage in orientalism and rebuild a red scare. I wonder if the British were this terrified of being bumped out of the #1 slot. Maybe the Dutch would be a more apt comparison.
- toxik 6y ago
  More importantly, these recent events are being likened to the Chinese cultural revolution _by Chinese people who lived through it._ That should give you enough of a signal to understand that this is not necessarily benign and in anybody’s best interest. I think the reason we use master and slave is simply that the words are short, equal length in both letters and syllables, and get the message across — cf leader/follower or primary/replica. I guess the last one is ok too. Racism and inequality should be fought where possible. Variable naming is simply not such a place. Blacks will not be less repressed, women will not be less mistreated.
  - sterlind 6y ago
    Slave is one syllable, master is two.
    - toxik 6y ago
      That’s true, slave is one. I guess my lazy counting vowel-consonant transitions is a bit of a bad heuristic in English. I personally blame the French.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - razius 6y ago
    Same thing with eastern european communism.
- Press2forEN 6y ago
  It really feels like we're entering a new dark age. One without context, nuance, or wisdom. I can only hope we find a way to resolve our differences before our cultural cold war becomes a hot one.
- geofft 6y ago
  Here's what I understand about the Cultural Revolution and the Red Guards: - The Cultural Revolution was organized by Chairman Mao, the leader of a single-party state. The Red Guards were personally supported by him. Both were official government policy and could not be opposed. - The goal was to attack people in power who were perceived as reactionary / "revisionist" and remove them from power, by violence if necessary. - The Cultural Revolution had, as a goal, the destruction of remnants of pre-communist history. The Red Guards attacked historical artifacts and cultural sites so that there was no memory of them. - Hundreds of thousands if not millions of people were killed. Here's my understanding of this pull request: - It was not ordered by any government. The current leader and current ruling party of the government under which the people involved in this pull request live are not aware of it or even the larger movement of similar pull requests / discussions, and if they were made aware of it, they'd almost certainly object. - It was done by the ZFS contributors themselves, not by outsiders. Nobody tried to remove existing people in power from that power, certainly not violently. - No attempt is made to erase history. History is right there in "git log." The pull request accurately points out that a change is being made, what the change is, and why. Older versions of ZFS remain published with the old terminology. - Nobody is dying. Nobody involved has a weapon more dangerous than "git reset --hard," and they'll only hurt themselves with that one anyway. I agree with you that we should be wary of government-imposed revolutionary fervor that seeks to destroy political opposition. I think, however, that if people involved a project have made up their minds freely about some topic and want to make some change, the way we should to guard against the dangers of things like the Cultural Revolution would be to encourage people to take actions they've decided upon in the places where they already have power, to encourage them to think for themselves, and to not try to portray folks with some very meager but nonzero power (like village mayors or ZFS maintainers) as dangerous threats to all that is good in the world who must be stopped by outsiders.
- throaway896504 6y ago
  This view is also common in Chinese social media: "One notable article, written by an immigrant in direct response to Huang’s letter, went further, accusing elite American educational institutions of 'brainwashing' the country’s youth and turning them into 'extreme leftists' who only care about identity politics. This view is common on Chinese social media, where users compare protestors and leftist young people with Cultural Revolution-era Red Guards."
rvz 6y ago
Is Linux going to be next? Let's ask Mr Torvalds nicely to remove all master / slave references in the Linux kernel because it is 'offensive'. /s I don't think such a request is practical given the kLOCs of those references which will break other software.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  My general take has been that we should probably avoid these terms moving forward, but that the technical cost of going through nearly a century’s worth of technical stack and fixing every last reference is probably a pretty technically risky operation.
  - xupybd 6y ago
    Technically risky yes but worth it. Inconsistencies in naming make code horrible to work with.
    - mikecoles 6y ago
      Perfect reason to leave the terminology as it is.
- geofft 6y ago
  Well, the use of "master"/"slave" in the PTY layer is technically inaccurate - they are two ends of a connection to a single object, over which the "master" and "slave" both have control - and there are certain operations that the "slave" can do that the "master" can't. The whole system would be less confusing if these entities had clearer names, and there's also no binary interface that uses the terms.
- kgraves 6y ago
  Don't forget git's master / slave references, and even the 'offensive' word 'git'. https://lore.kernel.org/git/CAOAHyQwyXC1Z3v7BZAC+Bq6JBaM7FvBenA-1fcqeDV==apdWDg@mail.gmail.com/ https://lore.kernel.org/git/CAOAHyQwyXC1Z3v7BZAC+Bq6JBaM7FvB...
- 6y ago
Hamuko 6y ago
Meanwhile searching for the term "kill" returns 75 code results in openzfs/zfs.
- quasarj 6y ago
  Well, there's nothing discriminatory about killing. We kill everyone eventually!
  - deogeo 6y ago
    Slavery is not exclusive to black people either.
    - soganess 6y ago
      Your right, it's insensitive to every people group that's been enslaved for any period of time. Yet somehow that doesn't encompass all people groups in the same way that kill does. Maybe we should be considerate of all peoples/individuals who have experienced slavery directly or in their ancestry. My Swiftian Proposal: lets just remain all uses of the word "slave" to "forcedChildLaborer". It's more accurate anyway, since in software a "slave" is usually "born" into the role and often times doesn't live very long. We are striving for accuracy after all, right? And for my two cents that will inflame this even more: We should considering deprecating the use of "kill" to signify terminate. I haven't used it in my 15+ years of writing software professionally and no one has impugned my code quality for not using "kill" enough.
  - ksaj 6y ago
    In the terminal it isn't all that rare to talk about killing children, sometimes even immediately after spawning. It might be a cultural warning on how an uncontrolled child, separated from its parent, could easily become a zombie. Not sure.
  - trav4225 6y ago
    discrimination: bad; killing: not a problem? Edit: I'm not being snarky. I truly don't understand this distinction.
boltzmann_brain 6y ago
We're witnessing mass insanity on levels never thought possible.
- Merem 6y ago
  Some people just have too much time on their hands. And it doesn't help that media is spreading this, as it generates clicks which in turn generates money. As such, total non-issues will be made an issue. The thing is, it's not even "mass" insanity. Working people who are busy with a family and such don't really post on social media, as they simply have no time. This creates a pretty large divide between the internet and real life. Though, I say this as someone not being part of the tech world which is more closely connected with social media.
  - boltzmann_brain 6y ago
    Invest in entry level jobs for poor communities and education resources? Nah. Fuck up software by changing names uses for decades? Perfect! These people are literally children.
rodgerd 6y ago
Unsurprising that HN can't manage better than the level of pearl-clutching by people invested in maintaining "master/slave terminology" as its discourse.
Artur96 6y ago
1984 is slowly becoming a reality. Great work comrades!
- geofft 6y ago
  What part of it specifically?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - pacala 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak
    - geofft 6y ago
      Newspeak removes terms from language so that certain ideas cannot be expressed. This pull request does concern language, yes. But it retains the use of the term "slave" in existing APIs, while updating a script that is named "slaves" to use the term "deps," a term that is already used elsewhere in the API. At the end of the pull request, both terms remain meaningful. Furthermore, no attempt is made to hide previous use of the term - or to prevent using the term "slave" to refer to human slavery. So I'm not sure I see the comparison.
      - pacala 6y ago
        The title right now: 'ZFS Removes References to Slavery'. Probably 95% of the commenters have not read TFA in sufficient detail to argue minutiae details. They see 'language changed in support of the dominant political current' and link it to Newspeak because that's the only frame of reference most people are aware of. It's not like it's an isolated incident, there is plenty of language redefinition, history rewriting and statues toppling as we speak.
        geofft 6y ago
mmoez 6y ago
According to some people, the term "binary" should be banned too...
mrbonner 6y ago
I created an automated tool to deploy and provision Hadoop YARN cluster at work. I’m so glad that I named the non-master hosts “core” nodes instead of slave node :) or I would have to change the naming convention now. I still have the “master” node though.
- vorticalbox 6y ago
  In this sense master and slave is the correct term. You have a master with unidirectional control over the slaves. Just like in IDE drivers of old.
speedgoose 6y ago
I think this is a good thing. I'm not a fan of removing the master name, because master has more meanings than in the slavery context and its other meanings fit well the metaphor of master in IT. But they have not removed the master term. Only the slave term, which can go away. I will not miss it, it always felt weird to use this metaphor.
- banads 6y ago
  Why should we ban the word "slave"; aren't there more people living in slavery now, than ever before in history? Seems like if anything we should be raising awareness about that, not hiding it literally.
  - trav4225 6y ago
    This is exactly the problem with "censorship". It merely hides reality. Why is transparency not better in most situations?
  - speedgoose 6y ago
    It's not about banning the word slave, we need this word, but the term slave in IT that is not necessary.
    - banads 6y ago
      Then why are IT professionals so eager to hide that word from themselves, when there are more people living in slavery now than ever before?
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  I find the name “main” or “develop” to be much more clear branch names than “master”.
akerro 6y ago
Can these project changing words at least agree on a single word to use? We're going to have 10s of different words representing the same thing that for decades of evolving technology was known as slave. It will make it confusing and difficult to move between technologies.
- qeternity 6y ago
  We already do to some degree: follower, replica, secondary, etc
  - dependenttypes 6y ago
    All of these seem quite a bit worse than slave to be honest. Why not use server/client instead? Edit: another post in this thread suggested master and puppet, I think that this is a cute yet clear variant.
    - qeternity 6y ago
      I wasn't saying they were worse. I was replying to a concern that we will end up with multiple names that mean the same thing. I mean, this is modern technology...it seems like only the hardware guys can manage consistent naming, and even that is slipping. On the software side? I can only think of rare things which don't have a half dozen synonyms.
      - dependenttypes 6y ago
        > I wasn't saying they were worse I.. know? I would not say that they are worse if you had said it yourself after all.
- geofft 6y ago
  That's the funny thing - in almost all contexts I've seen the "master/slave" terminology, it's not actually technically clear. In some contexts (e.g. Jenkins), a "master" tells the "slave" what to do and the "slave" does it. This at least is plausibly connected to the real-world meanings of the term, although given that the "slave" can start and stop work at any time and the "master" needs to accommodate that, the analogy isn't great. "Coordinator/worker" works well here. In some contexts (e.g., MySQL), a "master" sends a copy of all its work to the "slave," and both of them execute it. The "slave" stands ready to replace the "master" if the "master" becomes unavailable, and usually at that point the "master" becomes the new "slave" once it catches up. This makes no sense. "Primary/replica" works well here. In some contexts (e.g., network device bonding, and, I think, ZFS), a "master" is a logical construct, consisting of multiple physical "slaves". All interactions with the "master" are actually algorithmically sent to one or more "slaves," and if all the "slaves" are offline, there's no "master" left. This, also, makes no sense. Terms that would make sense include things like "bond device/bonded member" (the members being bonded to each other), "logical volume/physical volume", etc. In this pull request they seem to use "dependency." In some contexts (e.g. disk drives), the "master" and "slave" are both devices that provide the same type of service to the host, but the "slave" connects to the "master" instead of directly to the host, and while the "master" is communicating, the "slave" can't. This, also, makes no sense. "Primary/secondary" works well here. In pseudoterminals, the "master" is a limited API to the PTY object, held by the terminal emulator, which copies text to the screen, interpreters rendering commands, and sends input. The "slave" is a more featureful API to the same PTY object, held by the shell / the command under execution, which does what it wants. This, also, makes no sense. I don't know of a standard term here, but I'd sort of suggest "monitor" and "application" (or perhaps "monitor" and "session" if you want to keep the initials). All of these are different uses, and you can't generally map one to another. For instance, if you're used to a database where "master/slave" is used in the primary/replica sense, and you see a database where the "master" just coordinates requests for work and all actual data is sent to/from some "slave," your knowledge of primary/replica architecture is misleading here.
Ghjklov 6y ago
Nothing to see here except devs covering their asses from accusations. As a PoC, I recognize that actions like this do nothing to change the system and they are really just diversions from actually putting in effort to make a real impact.
- Hamuko 6y ago
  What's the definition for PoC? I want to know if I'm included.
  - votepaunchy 6y ago
    It’s a discriminatory term excluding people suffering from albinism.
    - dang 6y ago
      Please don't post flamebait here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dehrmann 6y ago
  (non-rhetorically) I wonder if actions like this are more harmful or beneficial. On one hand, they raise awareness, but on the other, they're just token gestures, and they might cause debate that'd be better spent on something for meaningful.
  - Ghjklov 6y ago
    It's the kind of token gesture that actually just makes people more skeptical or angry at PoC who most of the time had nothing to do with the gesture.
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      I doubt that’s specific to these kinds of efforts; it seems that any advance for PoC in America draws a significant backlash, whether or not the advance was substantive or symbolic.
hopfscotch6 6y ago
So ridiculous and over the top. Shut up.
xupybd 6y ago
I don't know if deps is the best replacement. Ignoring the politics for a moment, iff this is going to be done across the board I think a naming convention needs to be well thought out and developed to replace these terms. We will no doubt be left with the resulting terms for a very long time. Intuitive and descriptive names go a long way to lowering the mental overhead of working with code.
- PBnFlash 6y ago
  This I think is the key issue, replacing a clear label with half a dozen almost synonyms is the dangerous part of this precedent.
hopfscotch6 6y ago
The fact that you think so is incredibly telling.
hopfscotch6 6y ago
Ok NOW I’m ready to string you up lol
hopfscotch6 6y ago
I’m taking down names for after the revolution. You’re on it :)
dig1 6y ago
Let's rewrite complete CS papers and replace master/slave with master/"dependent (underlying)". In distributed systems, slaves can be independent in some cases, what then? Let's rewrite complete UNIX history and remove kill, cut, wc, finger, touch, mount, umount, git, nano, pico... because someone can find the context offending. Even better, let's dump words and use APL or hex/binary for communication. But, what if 1 or 0 offend someone? /s
manuelaljibes 6y ago
Wokeism at its best
freemint 6y ago
The Julia community also does not use slave and actively encourages the use of that term in community chat. I am not sure how i feel about that. I am not made uncomfortable by that term but i can't judge whether others might be. So i can only ask, what does that term do for me? Nothing but i guess i can convince my brain to think "worker" instead "slave".
databoygotit 6y ago
Why are there so few black ppl in tech? Bc they won’t commit to master
baron816 6y ago
Yeah, get rid of “slave”. The “master” thing I think is easy to remove too, so might as well, but I don’t think it’s nearly as bad. Think of all the things that are way more closely associated with “master”: MasterClass, masterpiece, Jedi Master, master craftsman, mastery, etc. I don’t think it’s necessary to get rid of all those terms.
takeda 6y ago
Is removing references to slavery actually being PC or preventing from being reminded of dark time in American history in any way?
artistsvoid 6y ago
I will try to avoid controversy here and word this carefully: I can't help but think that something is wrong in the minds of people who take offense at something like this. If in the context of programming and system administration, the term master/slave is 'offensive' and makes you think of racism, and one group of people being oppressed by another, your mind seems to make some completely different connections from mine. Maybe I am not fine-tuned into 'spotting' such things, which is the argument I would expect; but maybe some just have developed a sensitivity far beyond any reasonable amount in taking offense, which is my suspicion. How about we talk about meaningful ways to stop racism, which we can all agree is bad and unwarranted, jumping into action blindly might feel like you are doing something, but what exactly is this doing? I am very annoyed by such blindly executed and in my opinion unwarranted activism, and as soon as one speaks out against, one has to hide from the incoming attacks. So I guess HR departments have to check naming conventions in programs now for misogyny / politically non-correct / possibly racist terminology before release? By the way: I actually always thought of master / slave as completely racially independent terminology in general? If in a book a white man were enslaved by some Asian tribe, how would master/slave terminology be non-correct in describing the participants?
- kgraves 6y ago
  It's not 'activism', not even 'slacktivism', it's all about control and bullying, even over the most minute of 'spotting' such things.
  - geofft 6y ago
    This pull request is being sent in by one of the people who originally developed ZFS at Sun. Who is being bullied here?
- vijaybritto 6y ago
  This is such a terrible take! > So I guess HR departments have to check naming conventions in programs now for misogyny / politically non-correct / possibly racist terminology before release? Of course. Why is that a question? >If in a book a white man were enslaved by some Asian tribe, how would master/slave terminology be non-correct in describing the participants? Edit: xxxYes absolutelyxxx The terminology would be correct. But that's fiction. This is real life with real consequences. The reason it's being removed here is because it's ignorant and disrespectful.
yread 6y ago
Why haven't the prehistoric computer people choose something else. I like 'master' and 'puppet'. Totally non-offensive and very close to the metal
- takeda 6y ago
  I think a better is master-follower if they really must. But this is silly, I totally understand for PostgreSQL change from master-slave to master-standby. Standby is actually much better word to describe node's function. The change for the sake of word being offensive is just plain stupid. The use of it did not really encourage slavery based on race. So it feels less about offending then being reminded about horrible American's history. If they want to go all PC, what about use of word "kill"[1]? [1] https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/search?q=kill&unscoped_q=kill https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/search?q=kill&unscoped_q=kill
Separo 6y ago
I knew there would be these petty comments in here. For people who in general work in such an intellectual and ephemeral pursuit there is so much pathetic clinging to meaningless terms. The computer does not care. It's only the human beings in the community that do. And it's our choice whether to be neutral and inclusive or miserly trolls clinging to meaningless out of date terms coined in times when these weren't considerations. Rise above it. Embrace other people's experiences that maybe you have not had and have no idea about. Just appreciate that it may have happened to someone and not you and you do not have to reject them by posting a petty comment. Call it Big Cantaloupe / Little Cantaloupe. It doesn't matter. At least then nobody would be reminded of a murdered ancestor or the nature of the person who named it when all they wanted to do was use a stupid file system. Don't be a dick. Be nice. x
- dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
  > Don't be a dick. Be nice. x The irony here is that the discourse of people from your camp is usually non-inclusive.
  - fabatka 6y ago
    I think that maybe this falls under the paradox of tolerance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance)
    - dependenttypes 6y ago
      I think that you are right. It seems that a tolerant society attracts intolerant (both far left and far right) elements that want to restrict the freedom of speech. It is similar to the reason that GPL is prefered by some - by restricting some freedoms you defend the others. Similarly I think that it would make sense to restrict the freedom of speech of these that want to eliminate it.
- rich_sasha 6y ago
  A lot of language has unsavoury roots. We should recognise it and learn from it, fighting with the language feels like putting so much effort into minor things. I’d much rather people spent the time and energy teaching underprivileged kids some coding, for instance.
haunter 6y ago
I might make a pull request to remove all the references of kill (75 atm) https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/search?q=kill&unscoped_q=kill https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/search?q=kill&unscoped_q=kill The horrible effects of human killing continue to impact society. The casual use of the term "kill" in computer software is an unnecessary reference to a painful human experience.
- syshum 6y ago
  Wow they even reference "kill to the group." in this age of mass shootings I find that to be very offensive
  - haunter 6y ago
    Even worse killing children!
dependenttypes 6y ago
Small note: this is openzfs specifically. If that makes them happy then good for them. Although I personally think that this is a waste of time and also dislike the moral high ground that they attempted to take (trying to take advantage of the current climate to advertise their virtues), as if these that do not change the terminology used are somehow morally inferior. I do wonder if that would cause some form of incompatibility (between existing zfs tools and other zfs implementations, including previous openzfs versions) but I presume that they were careful about that. In addition I am annoyed that they decided to censor the linked thread. Edit: apparently it did not change any API names. Edit2: Surely I am not the only one who finds it ironic that they are using GitHub - a company which supports ICE, right?
dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
> The horrible effects of human slavery continue to impact society. The casual use of the term "slave" in computer software is an unnecessary reference to a painful human experience. What a strange world, really. Imagine the Germans renaming the command "kill", SIGKILL and so on for the same reason. (Or even stronger, as direct victims of WW2 are still alive.)
sandstrom 6y ago
I think this word censorship is meaningless and dangerous. It sets a bad precedent, anyone can get offended by anything. That doesn’t justify censorship. It's not even a white/black thing. White people has had white slaves (millions), black people has had black slaves (also millions). The Atlantic slave trade is just example of slavery. It has existed in many civilizations: “Evidence of slavery predates written records, and has existed in many cultures. [...] the practice of slavery [...] proliferated after the invention of agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution, about 11,000 years ago. Slavery was known in civilizations as old as Sumer, as well as in almost every other ancient civilization, including ancient Egypt, ancient China, the Akkadian Empire, Assyria, Babylonia, ancient Iran, ancient Greece, ancient India, the Roman Empire, the Arab Islamic Caliphate and Sultanate, Nubia and the pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery
- oliwarner 6y ago
  Sure... But why not remove imagery of slavery from tech syntax? We have plenty of other organisational terms to denote a higher rank. What's wrong with those? They might even be more accurate. I don't suppose DBAs get in a ship to pillage and loot foreign lands for their database redundancy. I see too many people arguing semantics or historical bias, or whataboutisms but barely anybody giving positive arguments to preserve the master-slave terms in tech. If "all races have had slavers" is the best you've got, perhaps it's time for change.
  - manuelaljibes 6y ago
    There's no technical reason to make this change, it's an annoying change with literally zero positive impact on the world, this won't abolish slavery nor will it help anyone, it may help the promoters of this stupidity to feel better about themselves, like "look at us! we are aligned with the PC agenda! We're sooo progressive and docile!"
    - oliwarner 6y ago
      No technical reason, but clearly a political reason. And politics matter in an open project where diversity and collaboration are so important to their long-life goals. You don't agree —and that's fine— but does it harm you to rename it? That is past the initial inconvenience of it not being the word that it's been before... Is that any more inconvenient than the other API changes that almost all software goes through at some point? I can understand some light grumbling, but I don't see why people get so bent out of shape they feel the need to start summarising slavery through the ages. "It's just a word" swings both ways.
forgot_user1234 6y ago
What do Indians think about this topic? P.S. - Indians were taken slaves to Africa, west indies etc. etc. my opinion - I don't give a flying hoot. There's no way I am changing my codebase for this BS.
ksaj 6y ago
I don't know if it counts, but I've noticed the use of Top Chef instead of Master Chef more and more often these days. On the other hand, you have "old masters" referring to great historical artists or colloquially, their artwork, "Masters" referring to golf tournaments, "mastery" when you get better at something over time, etc. None of these connect to a slave concept. The word slave, on the other hand, is more problematic since it doesn't have those other contexts, and always means some sort of subservience. We already went through this exact exercise back when multiple hard drives were referred to as a single master and however many slaves. We still call it a Master Boot Record, but any other boot sectors don't get called slaves anymore. Primary is a perfectly fine word that we're already using in this context nowadays. I'd be perfectly happy if we didn't have a dozen names for the same things. Everything else is secondary.
ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
Easy way to root out assholes when hiring: rename master to main. They’ll show themselves the door I’m gonna write a whole blog post about this
turrini 6y ago
dang: just for context, I've posted this here for discussion... Don't know why it was flagged.
- xupybd 6y ago
  Normally things are flagged here due to controversy. If a post starts political arguments it often gets flagged
totetsu 6y ago
Since this is already flagged, and only RSS power users will see this now, I will risk a negative comment. Sometimes HN seems like a great community of the the mind, a bastion from the flame storm that is the general conversation on the internet.. But sometimes you catch a glimpse of all that even here.. Not to disregard those who were trying to have good faith discussions here. I just feel sometimes like nowhere is beyond manipulation anymore..
tekproxy 6y ago
This is kink shaming.

55 points by turrini 6y ago

I invite people to read about the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the so-called Red Guards. We are getting there. Be very careful what you say and what exact terms you use.

ngcazz 6y ago
God forbid making concessions for the sake of empathy with people.
- hawkice 6y ago
  I've not met someone upset about the technical term. It's possible, but it doesn't minimize slavery (more than any technical term minimizes something by making it technical), slaves only follow the master.
- dsabanin 6y ago
  I think this is a new version of “think of the children” cliché, used to justify lots of questionable things for ages.
- marcoperaza 6y ago
  Each individual concession seems small but the end result is that one must live life in fear of saying the littlest wrong thing, lest the angry mob come down on you. We're at the point where we can't even talk about any of these issues, only obey the barked orders of angry activists.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
tangue 6y ago
Replying to an exaggeration by another one is not helping.
sildur 6y ago
Because it’s easier to do a PR removing “slave” than to stop buying cheap things made in slave workshops.
- akerro 6y ago
  >slave workshops. It's "unpaid labour" now.
- ianleeclark 6y ago
  Your boycott won't change anything. Is the only avenue of political change that you can see through the lens of individual consumption? I genuinely don't see boycotts as powerful as others, so maybe I'm missing something here. However, shouldn't all avenues be taken if you're attempting to change something?
  - banads 6y ago
    >maybe I'm missing something here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott#Notable_boycotts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott#Notable_boycotts You're right that boycotts without leverage experience little success, but wrong if you think they are never successful.
    - ianleeclark 6y ago
      They only work if there is a power differential in-line with a block of consumers. I don't see ZFS developers as being a large enough block to affect anything, so their suggestion largely seems to be saying, "just do nothing instead."
epicbots878 6y ago
This is very very good advice.
ashtonkem 6y ago
This is such a hyperbolic response that it’s hard to actually engage with it; I’m not sure that this is helping the conversation at all.
- ThrowawayBandit 6y ago
  This is not hyperbolic. That is what is extremely sad, and why I picked the topic I did as suggested reading: One important thing is to understand how these things start and get out of hand. Let's not bury our heads in the sand and refuse to see what is happening.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    The reference to the Red Guards is indeed hyperbolic and extremely loaded. You are comparing someone making a technical change to a government sponsored paramilitary organization that murdered thousands of people. It’s extremely hard to engage with the conversation when your position is that one side, if not stopped, will result in mass scale murder. If I make a good faith argument for this naming change, are you going to accuse me of supporting a proto red band?
    - ThrowawayBandit 6y ago
      I'll let you read about the topic then we can discuss, but do not think that what is happening is as innocuous as a "someone making a technical change". This has already gone far beyond that and we are really already quite close to "public denunciations" or the attacks on statues/the deads, etc. as it happened then.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - tangue 6y ago
        He's right. No fucking engineer is being thrown inside a camp starving to death so yes the comparison is hyperbolic.
Natsu 6y ago
This is complicated. I have zero attachment to terms like "slave" so there's no reason to hang onto them. But I feel like this drives slacktivism rather than real change, which is hard when there's literal slavery going on all over the world. See also: https://www.theclever.com/15-countries-where-slavery-is-still-legal/ https://www.theclever.com/15-countries-where-slavery-is-stil...
ianleeclark 6y ago
It's incredibly convenient we have a Boogeyman de jour to compare everything to. I don't quite know how the most reactionary elements of our crumbling society would vent otherwise. If history teaches us anything, it would be: violently. How else could we possibly look at the current cultural moment? Self-critically? No, never, not when we can engage in orientalism and rebuild a red scare. I wonder if the British were this terrified of being bumped out of the #1 slot. Maybe the Dutch would be a more apt comparison.
toxik 6y ago
More importantly, these recent events are being likened to the Chinese cultural revolution _by Chinese people who lived through it._ That should give you enough of a signal to understand that this is not necessarily benign and in anybody’s best interest. I think the reason we use master and slave is simply that the words are short, equal length in both letters and syllables, and get the message across — cf leader/follower or primary/replica. I guess the last one is ok too. Racism and inequality should be fought where possible. Variable naming is simply not such a place. Blacks will not be less repressed, women will not be less mistreated.
- sterlind 6y ago
  Slave is one syllable, master is two.
  - toxik 6y ago
    That’s true, slave is one. I guess my lazy counting vowel-consonant transitions is a bit of a bad heuristic in English. I personally blame the French.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- razius 6y ago
  Same thing with eastern european communism.
Press2forEN 6y ago
It really feels like we're entering a new dark age. One without context, nuance, or wisdom. I can only hope we find a way to resolve our differences before our cultural cold war becomes a hot one.
geofft 6y ago
Here's what I understand about the Cultural Revolution and the Red Guards: - The Cultural Revolution was organized by Chairman Mao, the leader of a single-party state. The Red Guards were personally supported by him. Both were official government policy and could not be opposed. - The goal was to attack people in power who were perceived as reactionary / "revisionist" and remove them from power, by violence if necessary. - The Cultural Revolution had, as a goal, the destruction of remnants of pre-communist history. The Red Guards attacked historical artifacts and cultural sites so that there was no memory of them. - Hundreds of thousands if not millions of people were killed. Here's my understanding of this pull request: - It was not ordered by any government. The current leader and current ruling party of the government under which the people involved in this pull request live are not aware of it or even the larger movement of similar pull requests / discussions, and if they were made aware of it, they'd almost certainly object. - It was done by the ZFS contributors themselves, not by outsiders. Nobody tried to remove existing people in power from that power, certainly not violently. - No attempt is made to erase history. History is right there in "git log." The pull request accurately points out that a change is being made, what the change is, and why. Older versions of ZFS remain published with the old terminology. - Nobody is dying. Nobody involved has a weapon more dangerous than "git reset --hard," and they'll only hurt themselves with that one anyway. I agree with you that we should be wary of government-imposed revolutionary fervor that seeks to destroy political opposition. I think, however, that if people involved a project have made up their minds freely about some topic and want to make some change, the way we should to guard against the dangers of things like the Cultural Revolution would be to encourage people to take actions they've decided upon in the places where they already have power, to encourage them to think for themselves, and to not try to portray folks with some very meager but nonzero power (like village mayors or ZFS maintainers) as dangerous threats to all that is good in the world who must be stopped by outsiders.
throaway896504 6y ago
This view is also common in Chinese social media: "One notable article, written by an immigrant in direct response to Huang’s letter, went further, accusing elite American educational institutions of 'brainwashing' the country’s youth and turning them into 'extreme leftists' who only care about identity politics. This view is common on Chinese social media, where users compare protestors and leftist young people with Cultural Revolution-era Red Guards."

rvz 6y ago

Is Linux going to be next? Let's ask Mr Torvalds nicely to remove all master / slave references in the Linux kernel because it is 'offensive'. /s I don't think such a request is practical given the kLOCs of those references which will break other software.

ashtonkem 6y ago
My general take has been that we should probably avoid these terms moving forward, but that the technical cost of going through nearly a century’s worth of technical stack and fixing every last reference is probably a pretty technically risky operation.
- xupybd 6y ago
  Technically risky yes but worth it. Inconsistencies in naming make code horrible to work with.
  - mikecoles 6y ago
    Perfect reason to leave the terminology as it is.
geofft 6y ago
Well, the use of "master"/"slave" in the PTY layer is technically inaccurate - they are two ends of a connection to a single object, over which the "master" and "slave" both have control - and there are certain operations that the "slave" can do that the "master" can't. The whole system would be less confusing if these entities had clearer names, and there's also no binary interface that uses the terms.
kgraves 6y ago
Don't forget git's master / slave references, and even the 'offensive' word 'git'. https://lore.kernel.org/git/CAOAHyQwyXC1Z3v7BZAC+Bq6JBaM7FvBenA-1fcqeDV==apdWDg@mail.gmail.com/ https://lore.kernel.org/git/CAOAHyQwyXC1Z3v7BZAC+Bq6JBaM7FvB...
6y ago

Hamuko 6y ago

Meanwhile searching for the term "kill" returns 75 code results in openzfs/zfs.

quasarj 6y ago
Well, there's nothing discriminatory about killing. We kill everyone eventually!
- deogeo 6y ago
  Slavery is not exclusive to black people either.
  - soganess 6y ago
    Your right, it's insensitive to every people group that's been enslaved for any period of time. Yet somehow that doesn't encompass all people groups in the same way that kill does. Maybe we should be considerate of all peoples/individuals who have experienced slavery directly or in their ancestry. My Swiftian Proposal: lets just remain all uses of the word "slave" to "forcedChildLaborer". It's more accurate anyway, since in software a "slave" is usually "born" into the role and often times doesn't live very long. We are striving for accuracy after all, right? And for my two cents that will inflame this even more: We should considering deprecating the use of "kill" to signify terminate. I haven't used it in my 15+ years of writing software professionally and no one has impugned my code quality for not using "kill" enough.
- ksaj 6y ago
  In the terminal it isn't all that rare to talk about killing children, sometimes even immediately after spawning. It might be a cultural warning on how an uncontrolled child, separated from its parent, could easily become a zombie. Not sure.
- trav4225 6y ago
  discrimination: bad; killing: not a problem? Edit: I'm not being snarky. I truly don't understand this distinction.

boltzmann_brain 6y ago

We're witnessing mass insanity on levels never thought possible.

Merem 6y ago
Some people just have too much time on their hands. And it doesn't help that media is spreading this, as it generates clicks which in turn generates money. As such, total non-issues will be made an issue. The thing is, it's not even "mass" insanity. Working people who are busy with a family and such don't really post on social media, as they simply have no time. This creates a pretty large divide between the internet and real life. Though, I say this as someone not being part of the tech world which is more closely connected with social media.
- boltzmann_brain 6y ago
  Invest in entry level jobs for poor communities and education resources? Nah. Fuck up software by changing names uses for decades? Perfect! These people are literally children.

rodgerd 6y ago

Unsurprising that HN can't manage better than the level of pearl-clutching by people invested in maintaining "master/slave terminology" as its discourse.

Artur96 6y ago

1984 is slowly becoming a reality. Great work comrades!

geofft 6y ago
What part of it specifically?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- pacala 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak
  - geofft 6y ago
    Newspeak removes terms from language so that certain ideas cannot be expressed. This pull request does concern language, yes. But it retains the use of the term "slave" in existing APIs, while updating a script that is named "slaves" to use the term "deps," a term that is already used elsewhere in the API. At the end of the pull request, both terms remain meaningful. Furthermore, no attempt is made to hide previous use of the term - or to prevent using the term "slave" to refer to human slavery. So I'm not sure I see the comparison.
    - pacala 6y ago
      The title right now: 'ZFS Removes References to Slavery'. Probably 95% of the commenters have not read TFA in sufficient detail to argue minutiae details. They see 'language changed in support of the dominant political current' and link it to Newspeak because that's the only frame of reference most people are aware of. It's not like it's an isolated incident, there is plenty of language redefinition, history rewriting and statues toppling as we speak.
      - geofft 6y ago

mmoez 6y ago

According to some people, the term "binary" should be banned too...

mrbonner 6y ago

I created an automated tool to deploy and provision Hadoop YARN cluster at work. I’m so glad that I named the non-master hosts “core” nodes instead of slave node :) or I would have to change the naming convention now. I still have the “master” node though.

vorticalbox 6y ago
In this sense master and slave is the correct term. You have a master with unidirectional control over the slaves. Just like in IDE drivers of old.

speedgoose 6y ago

I think this is a good thing. I'm not a fan of removing the master name, because master has more meanings than in the slavery context and its other meanings fit well the metaphor of master in IT. But they have not removed the master term. Only the slave term, which can go away. I will not miss it, it always felt weird to use this metaphor.

banads 6y ago
Why should we ban the word "slave"; aren't there more people living in slavery now, than ever before in history? Seems like if anything we should be raising awareness about that, not hiding it literally.
- trav4225 6y ago
  This is exactly the problem with "censorship". It merely hides reality. Why is transparency not better in most situations?
- speedgoose 6y ago
  It's not about banning the word slave, we need this word, but the term slave in IT that is not necessary.
  - banads 6y ago
    Then why are IT professionals so eager to hide that word from themselves, when there are more people living in slavery now than ever before?
ashtonkem 6y ago
I find the name “main” or “develop” to be much more clear branch names than “master”.

akerro 6y ago

Can these project changing words at least agree on a single word to use? We're going to have 10s of different words representing the same thing that for decades of evolving technology was known as slave. It will make it confusing and difficult to move between technologies.

qeternity 6y ago
We already do to some degree: follower, replica, secondary, etc
- dependenttypes 6y ago
  All of these seem quite a bit worse than slave to be honest. Why not use server/client instead? Edit: another post in this thread suggested master and puppet, I think that this is a cute yet clear variant.
  - qeternity 6y ago
    I wasn't saying they were worse. I was replying to a concern that we will end up with multiple names that mean the same thing. I mean, this is modern technology...it seems like only the hardware guys can manage consistent naming, and even that is slipping. On the software side? I can only think of rare things which don't have a half dozen synonyms.
    - dependenttypes 6y ago
      > I wasn't saying they were worse I.. know? I would not say that they are worse if you had said it yourself after all.
geofft 6y ago
That's the funny thing - in almost all contexts I've seen the "master/slave" terminology, it's not actually technically clear. In some contexts (e.g. Jenkins), a "master" tells the "slave" what to do and the "slave" does it. This at least is plausibly connected to the real-world meanings of the term, although given that the "slave" can start and stop work at any time and the "master" needs to accommodate that, the analogy isn't great. "Coordinator/worker" works well here. In some contexts (e.g., MySQL), a "master" sends a copy of all its work to the "slave," and both of them execute it. The "slave" stands ready to replace the "master" if the "master" becomes unavailable, and usually at that point the "master" becomes the new "slave" once it catches up. This makes no sense. "Primary/replica" works well here. In some contexts (e.g., network device bonding, and, I think, ZFS), a "master" is a logical construct, consisting of multiple physical "slaves". All interactions with the "master" are actually algorithmically sent to one or more "slaves," and if all the "slaves" are offline, there's no "master" left. This, also, makes no sense. Terms that would make sense include things like "bond device/bonded member" (the members being bonded to each other), "logical volume/physical volume", etc. In this pull request they seem to use "dependency." In some contexts (e.g. disk drives), the "master" and "slave" are both devices that provide the same type of service to the host, but the "slave" connects to the "master" instead of directly to the host, and while the "master" is communicating, the "slave" can't. This, also, makes no sense. "Primary/secondary" works well here. In pseudoterminals, the "master" is a limited API to the PTY object, held by the terminal emulator, which copies text to the screen, interpreters rendering commands, and sends input. The "slave" is a more featureful API to the same PTY object, held by the shell / the command under execution, which does what it wants. This, also, makes no sense. I don't know of a standard term here, but I'd sort of suggest "monitor" and "application" (or perhaps "monitor" and "session" if you want to keep the initials). All of these are different uses, and you can't generally map one to another. For instance, if you're used to a database where "master/slave" is used in the primary/replica sense, and you see a database where the "master" just coordinates requests for work and all actual data is sent to/from some "slave," your knowledge of primary/replica architecture is misleading here.

Ghjklov 6y ago

Nothing to see here except devs covering their asses from accusations. As a PoC, I recognize that actions like this do nothing to change the system and they are really just diversions from actually putting in effort to make a real impact.

Hamuko 6y ago
What's the definition for PoC? I want to know if I'm included.
- votepaunchy 6y ago
  It’s a discriminatory term excluding people suffering from albinism.
  - dang 6y ago
    Please don't post flamebait here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
dehrmann 6y ago
(non-rhetorically) I wonder if actions like this are more harmful or beneficial. On one hand, they raise awareness, but on the other, they're just token gestures, and they might cause debate that'd be better spent on something for meaningful.
- Ghjklov 6y ago
  It's the kind of token gesture that actually just makes people more skeptical or angry at PoC who most of the time had nothing to do with the gesture.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    I doubt that’s specific to these kinds of efforts; it seems that any advance for PoC in America draws a significant backlash, whether or not the advance was substantive or symbolic.

hopfscotch6 6y ago

So ridiculous and over the top. Shut up.

xupybd 6y ago

I don't know if deps is the best replacement. Ignoring the politics for a moment, iff this is going to be done across the board I think a naming convention needs to be well thought out and developed to replace these terms. We will no doubt be left with the resulting terms for a very long time. Intuitive and descriptive names go a long way to lowering the mental overhead of working with code.

PBnFlash 6y ago
This I think is the key issue, replacing a clear label with half a dozen almost synonyms is the dangerous part of this precedent.

hopfscotch6 6y ago

The fact that you think so is incredibly telling.

hopfscotch6 6y ago

Ok NOW I’m ready to string you up lol

hopfscotch6 6y ago

I’m taking down names for after the revolution. You’re on it :)

dig1 6y ago

Let's rewrite complete CS papers and replace master/slave with master/"dependent (underlying)". In distributed systems, slaves can be independent in some cases, what then? Let's rewrite complete UNIX history and remove kill, cut, wc, finger, touch, mount, umount, git, nano, pico... because someone can find the context offending. Even better, let's dump words and use APL or hex/binary for communication. But, what if 1 or 0 offend someone? /s

manuelaljibes 6y ago

Wokeism at its best

freemint 6y ago

The Julia community also does not use slave and actively encourages the use of that term in community chat. I am not sure how i feel about that. I am not made uncomfortable by that term but i can't judge whether others might be. So i can only ask, what does that term do for me? Nothing but i guess i can convince my brain to think "worker" instead "slave".

databoygotit 6y ago

Why are there so few black ppl in tech? Bc they won’t commit to master

baron816 6y ago

Yeah, get rid of “slave”. The “master” thing I think is easy to remove too, so might as well, but I don’t think it’s nearly as bad. Think of all the things that are way more closely associated with “master”: MasterClass, masterpiece, Jedi Master, master craftsman, mastery, etc. I don’t think it’s necessary to get rid of all those terms.

takeda 6y ago

Is removing references to slavery actually being PC or preventing from being reminded of dark time in American history in any way?

artistsvoid 6y ago

I will try to avoid controversy here and word this carefully: I can't help but think that something is wrong in the minds of people who take offense at something like this. If in the context of programming and system administration, the term master/slave is 'offensive' and makes you think of racism, and one group of people being oppressed by another, your mind seems to make some completely different connections from mine. Maybe I am not fine-tuned into 'spotting' such things, which is the argument I would expect; but maybe some just have developed a sensitivity far beyond any reasonable amount in taking offense, which is my suspicion. How about we talk about meaningful ways to stop racism, which we can all agree is bad and unwarranted, jumping into action blindly might feel like you are doing something, but what exactly is this doing? I am very annoyed by such blindly executed and in my opinion unwarranted activism, and as soon as one speaks out against, one has to hide from the incoming attacks. So I guess HR departments have to check naming conventions in programs now for misogyny / politically non-correct / possibly racist terminology before release? By the way: I actually always thought of master / slave as completely racially independent terminology in general? If in a book a white man were enslaved by some Asian tribe, how would master/slave terminology be non-correct in describing the participants?

kgraves 6y ago
It's not 'activism', not even 'slacktivism', it's all about control and bullying, even over the most minute of 'spotting' such things.
- geofft 6y ago
  This pull request is being sent in by one of the people who originally developed ZFS at Sun. Who is being bullied here?
vijaybritto 6y ago
This is such a terrible take! > So I guess HR departments have to check naming conventions in programs now for misogyny / politically non-correct / possibly racist terminology before release? Of course. Why is that a question? >If in a book a white man were enslaved by some Asian tribe, how would master/slave terminology be non-correct in describing the participants? Edit: xxxYes absolutelyxxx The terminology would be correct. But that's fiction. This is real life with real consequences. The reason it's being removed here is because it's ignorant and disrespectful.

yread 6y ago

Why haven't the prehistoric computer people choose something else. I like 'master' and 'puppet'. Totally non-offensive and very close to the metal

takeda 6y ago
I think a better is master-follower if they really must. But this is silly, I totally understand for PostgreSQL change from master-slave to master-standby. Standby is actually much better word to describe node's function. The change for the sake of word being offensive is just plain stupid. The use of it did not really encourage slavery based on race. So it feels less about offending then being reminded about horrible American's history. If they want to go all PC, what about use of word "kill"[1]? [1] https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/search?q=kill&unscoped_q=kill https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/search?q=kill&unscoped_q=kill

Separo 6y ago

I knew there would be these petty comments in here. For people who in general work in such an intellectual and ephemeral pursuit there is so much pathetic clinging to meaningless terms. The computer does not care. It's only the human beings in the community that do. And it's our choice whether to be neutral and inclusive or miserly trolls clinging to meaningless out of date terms coined in times when these weren't considerations. Rise above it. Embrace other people's experiences that maybe you have not had and have no idea about. Just appreciate that it may have happened to someone and not you and you do not have to reject them by posting a petty comment. Call it Big Cantaloupe / Little Cantaloupe. It doesn't matter. At least then nobody would be reminded of a murdered ancestor or the nature of the person who named it when all they wanted to do was use a stupid file system. Don't be a dick. Be nice. x

dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
> Don't be a dick. Be nice. x The irony here is that the discourse of people from your camp is usually non-inclusive.
- fabatka 6y ago
  I think that maybe this falls under the paradox of tolerance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance)
  - dependenttypes 6y ago
    I think that you are right. It seems that a tolerant society attracts intolerant (both far left and far right) elements that want to restrict the freedom of speech. It is similar to the reason that GPL is prefered by some - by restricting some freedoms you defend the others. Similarly I think that it would make sense to restrict the freedom of speech of these that want to eliminate it.
rich_sasha 6y ago
A lot of language has unsavoury roots. We should recognise it and learn from it, fighting with the language feels like putting so much effort into minor things. I’d much rather people spent the time and energy teaching underprivileged kids some coding, for instance.

haunter 6y ago

I might make a pull request to remove all the references of kill (75 atm) https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/search?q=kill&unscoped_q=kill https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/search?q=kill&unscoped_q=kill The horrible effects of human killing continue to impact society. The casual use of the term "kill" in computer software is an unnecessary reference to a painful human experience.

syshum 6y ago
Wow they even reference "kill to the group." in this age of mass shootings I find that to be very offensive
- haunter 6y ago
  Even worse killing children!

dependenttypes 6y ago

Small note: this is openzfs specifically. If that makes them happy then good for them. Although I personally think that this is a waste of time and also dislike the moral high ground that they attempted to take (trying to take advantage of the current climate to advertise their virtues), as if these that do not change the terminology used are somehow morally inferior. I do wonder if that would cause some form of incompatibility (between existing zfs tools and other zfs implementations, including previous openzfs versions) but I presume that they were careful about that. In addition I am annoyed that they decided to censor the linked thread. Edit: apparently it did not change any API names. Edit2: Surely I am not the only one who finds it ironic that they are using GitHub - a company which supports ICE, right?

dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago

> The horrible effects of human slavery continue to impact society. The casual use of the term "slave" in computer software is an unnecessary reference to a painful human experience. What a strange world, really. Imagine the Germans renaming the command "kill", SIGKILL and so on for the same reason. (Or even stronger, as direct victims of WW2 are still alive.)

sandstrom 6y ago

I think this word censorship is meaningless and dangerous. It sets a bad precedent, anyone can get offended by anything. That doesn’t justify censorship. It's not even a white/black thing. White people has had white slaves (millions), black people has had black slaves (also millions). The Atlantic slave trade is just example of slavery. It has existed in many civilizations: “Evidence of slavery predates written records, and has existed in many cultures. [...] the practice of slavery [...] proliferated after the invention of agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution, about 11,000 years ago. Slavery was known in civilizations as old as Sumer, as well as in almost every other ancient civilization, including ancient Egypt, ancient China, the Akkadian Empire, Assyria, Babylonia, ancient Iran, ancient Greece, ancient India, the Roman Empire, the Arab Islamic Caliphate and Sultanate, Nubia and the pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery

oliwarner 6y ago
Sure... But why not remove imagery of slavery from tech syntax? We have plenty of other organisational terms to denote a higher rank. What's wrong with those? They might even be more accurate. I don't suppose DBAs get in a ship to pillage and loot foreign lands for their database redundancy. I see too many people arguing semantics or historical bias, or whataboutisms but barely anybody giving positive arguments to preserve the master-slave terms in tech. If "all races have had slavers" is the best you've got, perhaps it's time for change.
- manuelaljibes 6y ago
  There's no technical reason to make this change, it's an annoying change with literally zero positive impact on the world, this won't abolish slavery nor will it help anyone, it may help the promoters of this stupidity to feel better about themselves, like "look at us! we are aligned with the PC agenda! We're sooo progressive and docile!"
  - oliwarner 6y ago
    No technical reason, but clearly a political reason. And politics matter in an open project where diversity and collaboration are so important to their long-life goals. You don't agree —and that's fine— but does it harm you to rename it? That is past the initial inconvenience of it not being the word that it's been before... Is that any more inconvenient than the other API changes that almost all software goes through at some point? I can understand some light grumbling, but I don't see why people get so bent out of shape they feel the need to start summarising slavery through the ages. "It's just a word" swings both ways.

forgot_user1234 6y ago

What do Indians think about this topic? P.S. - Indians were taken slaves to Africa, west indies etc. etc. my opinion - I don't give a flying hoot. There's no way I am changing my codebase for this BS.

ksaj 6y ago

I don't know if it counts, but I've noticed the use of Top Chef instead of Master Chef more and more often these days. On the other hand, you have "old masters" referring to great historical artists or colloquially, their artwork, "Masters" referring to golf tournaments, "mastery" when you get better at something over time, etc. None of these connect to a slave concept. The word slave, on the other hand, is more problematic since it doesn't have those other contexts, and always means some sort of subservience. We already went through this exact exercise back when multiple hard drives were referred to as a single master and however many slaves. We still call it a Master Boot Record, but any other boot sectors don't get called slaves anymore. Primary is a perfectly fine word that we're already using in this context nowadays. I'd be perfectly happy if we didn't have a dozen names for the same things. Everything else is secondary.

ulisesrmzroche 6y ago

Easy way to root out assholes when hiring: rename master to main. They’ll show themselves the door I’m gonna write a whole blog post about this

turrini 6y ago

dang: just for context, I've posted this here for discussion... Don't know why it was flagged.

xupybd 6y ago
Normally things are flagged here due to controversy. If a post starts political arguments it often gets flagged

totetsu 6y ago

Since this is already flagged, and only RSS power users will see this now, I will risk a negative comment. Sometimes HN seems like a great community of the the mind, a bastion from the flame storm that is the general conversation on the internet.. But sometimes you catch a glimpse of all that even here.. Not to disregard those who were trying to have good faith discussions here. I just feel sometimes like nowhere is beyond manipulation anymore..

tekproxy 6y ago

This is kink shaming.