11 ms·

Opinion: Case for removing master-slave terminology from music production tools

30 points by glitcher 6y ago

exabrial 6y ago
Oh ffs. Get some education: https://www.google.com/search?q=dictionary+master&oq=dictionary+master https://www.google.com/search?q=dictionary+master&oq=diction... These are just distractions from real issues. This isn't even incremental progress; it's a conscious choice to do nothing while looking good like you're actually "doing something".
- bnj 6y ago
  The first definition reads, “a man who has people working for him, especially servants or slaves.” Wouldn’t that seem to justify moving in a direction of updating these terms?
  - exabrial 6y ago
    I would recommend a guide on parts of speech and expanding and reading all definitions.
    - arielserafini 6y ago
      If we're being sticklers, in this context you have to take the meaning of the word "master" in relation to its counterpart, "slave"; the other definitions are irrelevant.
  - Proziam 6y ago
    The first definition is marked historical. The other 3 definitions google offers make no reference to slavery unless you really want to stretch "in charge of an organization or group" just to be offended.
    - bnj 6y ago
      Personally, and perhaps I should have said this in my first comment, I would challenge the premise that the dictionary definition should be a controlling factor in responding to this whole question. For me, it's more about looking at the potential for harm. I happen to be a white man with no particular harm one way or another associated with terms like these, but I can understand how people with other experiences might feel impacted by being surrounded by terminology like this. It doesn't hurt me at all to change the terms I use, and if other people with other backgrounds think it's important to do it, I don't have any problem with that.
      - Proziam 6y ago
        My issue with this approach is this: it drags attention and headlines away from real issues. We need serious reform in our policing and prisons in the US. Every time serious reform is demanded in any real way, the distractions get brought up and the real issues are minimized. I don't believe for a moment that this is accidental. As someone who has black siblings who are now having children of their own, I am infinitely more offended that the real issues get strategically minimized. Look at the reactions to these threads for an example. Look at how many people (black and white) are saying it's an [0]"obvious distraction" or a non-issue. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/h8w36t/github_will_no_longer_use_the_term_master_as/ https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/h8w36t/github_...
        bnj 6y ago
        I absolutely respect that, and honestly I'm not sure how much energy needs to be spent on these terms. I agree that it would be an overall negative if we allowed something that might be insignificant like these systemic terms to distract from things like legal reform. Personally, I would settle on the side of updating the terms and not being too worried about it or expending further thought, because the use of these specific master/slave terms isn't something I'm attached to. It's a habit I don't mind updating. I also think, tentatively, that it's not really for me to decide how big a deal this is. I just don't have the experience to understand how big an impact these terms might have. It seems plausible that distractors would get thrown around at a time like this to expend energy without attacking any real structures which would make life more uncomfortable, and I appreciate your bringing it up because I might not have thought about it in those terms. For myself, I'm happy for these terms to get updated, and I intend to do what I can to focus on continuing to educate myself and try to learn how I can be more effective in deconstructing things that cause harm to people, and to trying to learn more about what it means to be anti-racist. In terms of values, that's how I think I want to approach something like this, and I respect that other people have a different approach-- I don't mind, as long as the approach people take isn't rooted in things that will perpetuate violence and harm toward people.
- stdbrouw 6y ago
  Let's grant that a terminology change like this is just a distraction. If so, why do you get so worked up about it? Why not just say to yourself "heh, much good that'll do, but whatever" and move on?
  - exabrial 6y ago
    It's exhausting watching companies that have enough capital and resources to educate, train, and employ disadvantaged Americans and give them a better life resort to pandering of the lowest level during a crisis to promote their brand. I don't wish to participate or support their ruse.
    - stdbrouw 6y ago
      But Peter Kirn, the author, is not a company, he's a musician. He's not selling music software so he can't (as per the sibling comment) racewash it.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - elif 6y ago
    The case that could be made is that the energy, time, and attention of a movement are finite, and those resources can be allocated in a way that makes us /feel/ like change is happening while, in fact, no substantive change is occurring. It can function like a pressure relief valve. An immediate example that comes to mind is the firing of 6 APD officers that discharged tasers at protestors. Subsequently, nothing structural in the police department changed, but protests dissipated because of the 'victory' and then an even worse botched arrest occured because nothing fundamental had changed.
    - jjeaff 6y ago
      Merely firing officers for wrongdoing is itself a huge departure from the norm and starts to set a precedent. Of course, it must continue even when riots aren't gathered outside the precinct.
- kspacewalk2 6y ago
  What's the term that's equivalent to greenwashing here? Racewashing?
- happytoexplain 6y ago
  While at first glance I don't see any value in changing these terms, I do think pushback of this angry tone serves to illustrate the shocking degree of negative emotional energy that people have for the topic, which ironically serves as evidence that the terms do matter, and strengthens the argument for the change.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - exabrial 6y ago
    No, not at all. Read my other comment below.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- kibibu 6y ago
  The article explicitly says that Master on its own is not a problem. So, for example, creating a CD master, or remastering, is fine. The issue is with the master/slave pairing.
  - tartoran 6y ago
    Yeah, I always wondered who came up with this master/slave terminology and what they had in mind. Was it a joke?
    - notajoke 6y ago
      No, I don’t think so anyway. It’s a very literal, very accurate abstraction for reasoning about the way two components in a system interact. Consider devices connected on an i2c communication bus. One device is literally acting as the master and dictating to the slaves, who have no choice in the matter. To argue that the terms should be changed is to deny the reality of the situation - some of those devices are enslaved. Not followers, slaves!
      - arielserafini 6y ago
        "very accurate"? so a "master" hard drive issues commands to a "slave" drive?
        notajoke 6y ago
        Yes, exactly. Take IDE drives for example. To use two drives with a single cable, one is set to be the master, the other to be the slave. From that point onwards, the slave cannot write to the bus until the master gives permission.
        arielserafini 6y ago
        I was referring to newer ATA drives. Nevertheless, in your example no orders (or ownership!) are implied.
      - 6y ago
- slumpt_ 6y ago
  Are you a person of color? It may be relevant to whether or not you could or would likely understand adequately why this might bother someone. Edit: Downvotes won’t make this inconvenient reality go away.
  - AdrianB1 6y ago
    I live in a country where slavery is something we read about from books, the master/slave terms have no race conotations. Changing established technical terms just because less than 5% of the world population has some sensitivity to history before their grand-grand parents is excessive. Don't make me remember what Italian's ancestors did to my ancestors, or else I will have to ask current Italians for reparations. Well, this sounds extremely stupid, is it?
    - slumpt_ 6y ago
      It doesn’t sound extremely stupid to me. I’m not a person of color but can imagine how it might feel like the right time to shrug certain terms out of our public discourse. That it does not upset you is of no consequence. That it may be hurtful to others has consequence. It’s very little skin off our backs in the grand scheme. If it is a hill you’d like to die on though, do as you must. I’d just suggest that there may be times things frustrate you that you do not understand, and it is then that it can be better to simply listen. Take care.
    - asjw 6y ago
      As Italian, I'm sorry for what we did And I add to what you said: don't make me remember what other Italians did to my Italian family, no more than 75 years ago.
      - AdrianB1 6y ago
        Do not be sorry for what some people 2000 years ago did to some other people; it was not you, there is nothing to be sorry about. Collective guilt and collective punishment are bad ideas.
- bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago
  Indeed. I'm glad people are fixing racism (read: assuaging their white guilt) by renaming things instead of agitating for health care reform (or, closer at hand: for interview process reform). Why it's almost as if this is all a distraction that effectively benefits the already comfortable...
tekcyb-org 6y ago
Hiding words from people isn't going to help or save anyone. It just supports ignorance.
- britch 6y ago
  No one is arguing take the word slave out of the dictionary or history books. We can call these things whatever we want. It's a name for an abstract concept. Why not change it to something that does not refer to one of the most barbaric, nightmarish relationships between people? For me personally it makes we wince whenever someone uses "master/slave." We don't need to be casually throwing around "master and slave" in a professional setting
  - Valmar 6y ago
    > Why not change it to something that does not refer to one of the most barbaric, nightmarish relationships between people? Gee, maybe because it also has connotations that have nothing to do with racism or human slavery? Where does this slippery slope end? Should we change other terms in computer technology simply because some vastly small minority emotionally fragile busybodies break down at the mere sight of the word "abort" or "kill" or "terminate"? Master/slave have very well defined meanings in computer terminology ~ and spoiler alert, there are no human or racial connotations in those meanings anywhere.
    - britch 6y ago
      I think I see where you are coming from. I'm not advocating for changing "abort" or "kill" and agree they go too far. I disagree with your point that it has nothing to do with racism or human slavery. The name master/slave indicates one is giving direction and one is following direction. It's not like someone sat there thought the letters m.a.s.t.e.r sounded good and might at well be the name of bit of the system giving order. My concern is not with industry veterans, but with people being introduced to tech or non-techincal people who are brought into technical discussions. Honestly, would your rather explain a bug as "the secondary was not following the instructions from the primary" or "the slave was not following the instructions of the master" to a room full of people unfamiliar with the subject? The master/slave naming scheme is, to me, an especially bad situation. Things like whitelist/blacklist do not have the same urgency in my mind. I appreciate your concern for the slippery slope but think we can address this without falling all the way to the bottom.
Proziam 6y ago
It's remarkable how much drama is being manufactured over a non-issue. There's a zero percent chance the people putting in the effort to promote this don't realize that 'Master' is an industry term of art meaning original or reference copy.
- elliekelly 6y ago
  Is “slave” an industry term of art? Certainly most people are familiar with the concept of a “master copy” - keys, documents, etc. but computer networking is the only time I’ve ever encountered the word “slave” thrown around so cavalierly.
  - nkurz 6y ago
    Yes, both "master" and "slave" have been used as a pair for a long time in a number of different technical fields to describe relationships between devices. Instead of computer networking, the linked article is on a site that focuses on music technology (https://cdm.link https://cdm.link). If you search (for example) [midi "slave"] you'll come up with a lot of hits using "slave" in a technical sense for electronic music. Here's a nice example page from that search, that goes farther to distinguish (technically and without irony) two different types of masters and slaves: https://steinberg.help/cubase_pro_artist/v10/en/cubase_nuendo/topics/synchronization/synchronization_master_and_slave_c.html https://steinberg.help/cubase_pro_artist/v10/en/cubase_nuend....
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    Master and slave cylinders also exist for break cylinders and guess what computer hardrives were largely historically before flash? Rotating cylinders of some sort even if the memory was tape. That are literally "driven" by the master. Having no motive of their own only driven by the master. It is a tasteless pun metaphor at worst.
- nkurz 6y ago
  > There's a zero percent chance the people putting in the effort to promote this don't realize that 'Master' is an industry term of art meaning original or reference copy. True, although in the case of this article it's talking more about music technology like MIDI, where rather than "original" or "reference" it usually means something closer to "leader" or "commander". But this misses the point of the article. The suggestion isn't that we should drop the historic terms to improve the precision of tech communication. Rather, the worry is that habitualizing the terms "master" and "slave" in technology desensitizes us to concept. If we accept that one device is naturally the "master" of other devices, perhaps we are more willing to accept that one human can be the master of other humans. If we accept that the role of one device is to be merely a "slave", perhaps we won't recoil sufficiently at the notion that one human might be enslave another. Certainly, one can disagree with this premise. Why should using the same language to describe one concept influence attitudes toward another? But rather than suggesting that author is pretending not to understand a standard industry term, you'd do much better to argue about the point the article is actually making.
spacephysics 6y ago
They’re coming after tech. Don’t worry, changing terminology will change the underlying issues. Just be careful not to cause thoughtcrime once neuralink is feasible in a few decades.
- there_the_and 6y ago
  No, the people who want this change literally built the tech. [1] All of you getting triggered and crying from the peanut gallery need to develop some perspective and go back to work. https://twitter.com/xpasky/status/1271477451756056577?s=21 https://twitter.com/xpasky/status/1271477451756056577?s=21
  - spacephysics 6y ago
    Regardless of who invented it, it’s the notion of changing how one speaks, and it’s vocabulary, to gain control over people. Don’t abide by the change/are against it? Then you’re a racist fool, like all the others. It’s a move towards further tribalism. This isn’t about a functionally better term for it. It’s a push during the mob rage over names, statues, and symbols. They already want to shutdown stem, first for a day, then more. Let’s not debate these symbols, in coherent discourse, let’s label those opposed as racist, and demand change or else more chaos will ensue.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
rurban 6y ago
Another opinion: Instead for going after the words, go after the facts. The US is the world's largest slave owner state. Their prison system is the modern equivalent of a slave economy under slave jurisdiction, and the treatment of illegal foreign labor not much different. How about legal reforms?
- arielserafini 6y ago
  Can't we do both?
  - myst 6y ago
    Why would you need to (re)invent words if there is no problem anymore?
    - arielserafini 6y ago
      So structural racism has ended?
      - asjw 6y ago
        Well, masters and slaves have existed longer before than structural racism They were already there in Babylon over 4 thousands years ago.
        asjw 6y ago
        It's kinda depressing to see the downvote, again, because people don't know history Slavery does not imply racism, it hasn't been the case for a very long time throughout history, slaves were a social class, a synonym for what we call "working class" or they were people from conquered lands, that were enslaved as a display of suoremacy, not because of their ethnicity. They usually were of the same ethnicity. Rome had emperors who were born in Africa (Settimio Severo for example) Have the slaves suffered abuses? Yes, of course, just like working class, and farmers and other poor classes before them, have been exploited. French Revolution is all about that. They were all French against other French. Only in modern history slavery has been justified by racism (the theory that some "races" were superior to others) but it's not modern slavery that created racism, it's the opposite.
01100011 6y ago
Personally I feel like these changes are silly but it is not a hill I want to die on. I understand some may think this is a slippery slope but as a society we've been sliding down it for years now. Just make the change and move on. Focus on problems that matter.
- akvadrako 6y ago
  So your argument is: the slippery slope is real but we've already got too much speed so we might as well hit rock bottom?
  - 01100011 6y ago
    My point is we aren't going to stop 30 years of political correctness. The inertia is there. Software already has an image problem. Fighting something like this makes our industry look bad and doesn't really help anyone or set back the PC train. We're hitting rock bottom either way. Let's not drag down the software industry in the process.
slim 6y ago
it seems the end game of this is to disappear the words slave and master from our vocabulary, so we can't express those ideas anymore and let slavery expand unhindered
- tartoran 6y ago
  If the words were to dissapear from the dictionay (which is not happening btw) then we’d invent others, don’t worry. I find this change somewhat futile as it will not make people less racist, but if it offends black people we could go with a diferent term, why not? I always found master/slave a bit too idiomatic. I imagined a hardrive whipping the other form time to time. This picture is painful to some, lets update it and show we’re willing to do good. Im worried though that the change will amount to these types of changes, removing statues, adding disclaimets in history books, old movies etc and then no real change (as in needed change) will emerge. Hope im wrong though
  - guggle 6y ago
    > but if it offends black people we could go with a diferent term, why not? How do we know black people are offended by the terminology of midi clocks ?
- ardy42 6y ago
  > it seems the end game of this is to disappear the words slave and master from our vocabulary, so we can't express those ideas anymore and let slavery expand unhindered No, you're engaging in inaccurate hyperbole. The end game for these efforts will be to make "slave" a more precise and specific term, not to erase it entirely. Does the existence of the terms "pork" (pig meat) and "pig" (animal source of pork) strike you as Newspeak?
- allanmacgregor 6y ago
  Next Target, chess! An Inherently racist game were White fights against Black, and where the White privilege is clearly documented as White gets to move first.
TAForObvReasons 6y ago
Some tools already do this. Reason switched in 2017: https://www.reasonstudios.com/en/reason/updates/release-notes https://www.reasonstudios.com/en/reason/updates/release-note... > Reason 10.0.1 / Reason Essentials 10.0.1 Release Notes > ReWire master/mixer and slave/device is now always referred to as "host" and "device"
nowandlater 6y ago
“We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!” ― Arthur Miller, The Crucible
chrisdhoover 6y ago
Cars have master and slave cylinders. I never liked the terms because I don’t think the terms a very descriptive. Pedal cylinder and wheel cylinder describe the devices better.
barry27 6y ago
pointless arm flappery. how many people when configuring a piece of music software or hardware to be a slave get themselves a jolly thinking about how they're putting one over the downtrodden. flag me, reid. you know you want to.
hashbig 6y ago
What is that make people react to events that happen in the US differently than those outside of the US? I mean there are people who die and people who protest about a variety of different issues outside of the US (just recently protests in Hong Kong, Iraq, and Lebanon). However, it never causes this magnitude of response, from media platforms and tech companies, to music production terminology.
root_axis 6y ago
Ideas like this are a great way to signal how privileged you are. Black people being murdered by the cops don't care about master/slave jargon in technology, it's hilariously out of touch that someone would even think this is at all important with respect to the issues going on right now.
- jfrankamp 6y ago
  I think some people like myself see the current issue as an iceberg like problem. Systemic racism is composed of many tiny parts. This is not an either/or question, but a yes/and one. You can both not want to be killed and care about the casual and lazy use of language. We can as technologists, change this without stopping work on police reform for example. The defensiveness/resistance to change is much more interesting to me. As for signalling, Sure we don't need to advertise it to ourselves and give accolades for something so simple. But we can do the bit and move on. I guess a lot of people are in love with the idea that if doing something is good then it must be being done in order to be _seen_ as doing good. That is bullshit unless you happen to know intent.
  - hckr_news 6y ago
    Good point. Micro aggressions add up if you will.
    - sukilot 6y ago
      Somehow people forgot that "micro" was part of "micro aggressions". When you are in a comfortable space where macro aggressions are absent, it's worth looking at micro agressions. I'd rather GitHub keep "master" and have a onhover tooltip in the web UI showing a quote of the day about modern slavery or racism and linking to a way to take action.
  - root_axis 6y ago
    I think now is the worst possible time to delve into this issue. America doesn't pay attention to anything for long, especially issues related to systemic racism. Right now when we have the ear of America we can't afford to squander that attention on trivialities that don't affect the lives or outcomes of oppressed people. The dynamics of racial discourse over the last decade means unimportant issues like this will only be used as an excuse to shut down the conversation around the issues that really do matter, yet we don't get anything material in return for dying on this hill, this is just social justice theater meant to make privileged people feel good about themselves.
ohgodplsno 6y ago
White people fighting worthless causes to feel good about themselves and patting themselves on the back because they fought away racism by changing names, episode 2345. But sure, go ahead, make the term disappear. That will surely fix the underlying issue.
guggle 6y ago
There we go again with a Rubocop-like complaint. Are we at the pinnacle of ridicule yet ? Because I don't think I can take anymore. The amount of bigotry in the news is puzzling.
rrradical 6y ago
A lot of the other comments here seem absurd to me. We should all be able to imagine terminology that would be repulsive. (I.e., imagine if some tech term or project name were a racial slur. Would you really argue against changing it?). So yea, there's a line to draw somewhere; we can't say every technical term is immune from critique. So then the argument is that in this particular case it's just not a big deal and people shouldn't be upset about it. Well, if you're saying that, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that your recent ancestors didn't have to deal with slavery! What percentage of people in tech are Black? Some single digit percentage? What if tech were 95% Black? Would we really say master/slave? Of course not. That wording has a lot of baggage for some people! So even if 9 out of 10 people don't have a problem with the word and see this as a PC slippery slope, that doesn't mean the minority is wrong to request changes. It's not difficult to change the terminology, and it helps some people, so why fight it.
- noncoml 6y ago
  Master is a word. Slave is a word. Being words, they have a meaning. In the context that are being used, it describes the abstraction very well. Is slavery absolutely wrong? Of course! That doesn't mean we will have to ban the words..
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > Master is a word. Slave is a word. Being words, they have a meaning. And emotional content, which may differ from person to person. Society is not made up of robots. > In the context that are being used, it describes the abstraction very well. It's also gauche, at best.
    - noncoml 6y ago
      You, and I, are responsible for our own emotions. Once we start going down that road it will be very easy to do away with free speech because “emotions”. And I say that as an extremely sensitive person.
      - 6y ago
jdmg94 6y ago
I'm all for these changes on a personal level, but when a company like Github (and by extension MS) makes a PR move virtue signaling like they actually did something then we should be skeptic, because they have time and time again supported ICE and other law-enforcement that tells a very different story.
glitcher 6y ago
I was hesitant to submit this article because it seems extremely insignificant in the broader context of current societal changes. But then it made me ponder the wide extent to which current events are causing people of all walks of life to question and reevaluate even the smallest details of everything around us. Do I think that the proposed changes would make a noticeable difference to society? Probably not. Ultimately do I care if this specific effort succeeds or fails? Nope, don't really care either way. However, I do think the broader discussion about questioning how we use language, and where certain colloquialisms originated, is important. But I do see opinions at both extreme ends of this topic which are not trying to have good faith discussions, and instead are focused on the absolute worst case scenarios. Maybe the reactions to this story are even more significant than the story itself.
- nkurz 6y ago
  It's a good article. Thanks for submitting it! Perhaps reflexively, I tend to disagree with its conclusions, but it certainly makes me doubt myself. I was going to resubmit it if it didn't gain traction. I do think you should have gone with something closer to the original title, though. It doesn't quite fit exactly, but it does if you leave out a comma and one word: "Let’s dump master-slave terms: they’re vague and we’re better off without them". Maybe you still able to edit it?
- ffn 6y ago
  > Maybe the reactions to this story are even more significant than the story itself. That's the problem though - by focusing undue politicized attention onto an ultimately irrelevant piece of terminology opinion, we've detracted from the real problem at hand (regardless if think the real issue at hand is systemic racism oppressing minorities or "SJW"s destroying our institutions). When you attach the emotional baggage of known hotbed political issues to trivial things asking for people's opinion,we know from the works of psychologists like Jon Haidt and stuff, that these opinions quickly enter into the realm of the sacred. This forces us to first have a visceral emotion reaction, then find all sorts of reasons to back-up our initial response without any regard for counterpoints. In other words, invitations to bikeshed like this one can't lead to any meaningful or sensible debate because there was never at any substance to debate - just emotional baggage from a much more politicized topic that keeps everyone arguing BTW, you can recognize this as a cognitive trap to bikeshed while missing the point by considering the hypothetical scenario if a developer one day decided to up and just publish some patch notes to the effect of "master records now renamed to release records to be more semantic", would anyone bat an eye?
MintelIE 6y ago
This is really creepy and I have an intense dislike for the people behind it. Nobody alive today was a slave and choosing to become ass hurt at industry standard terms, which aren't even racial in nature (every race has been enslaved), isn't acceptable. I never used Github as my primary host for projects, merely as a social network to show off my projects. But I'll be moving away from them now because I simply don't want to see crazy lefties redefining my language to suit their whims. And there's no discussion at all, it's all unilateral or you're a Nazi. OK then.
noncoml 6y ago
Next, we should stop using male/female for connectors.
- nkurz 6y ago
  This suggestion was in fact made at the bottom of the article: Bonus footnote – male and female? Switch to “plug” and “socket.” This change is tougher, though, because there’s no easy abbreviation to ‘m’ and ‘f’ for text that is tougher to change. But the terms are clearer and … you know, less gross.
  - noncoml 6y ago
    I was being sarcastic.. :/
    - baggy_trough 6y ago
      There's no bottom to this rat hole.
vector_spaces 6y ago
If your initial response to this is negative, and you aren't a member of a demographic that doesn't have recent, painful memories of slavery with horrible, tragic effects that persist to this day, then you really need to check yourself. For some people who've been through this trauma, the words "master" and "slave" evoke one painful meaning first, before the alternative meaning is understood. If you've never personally experienced something like this, I've read it described as being punched in the stomach. And it's wholely unnecessary, so why not change it? Words matter. Maybe they don't to you, but trust that people aren't lying when they say it does to them. I'm super disappointed by the callous response to this: when people talk about gatekeeping in tech, or the myriad failures of tech to be accessible to marginalized people, this is what they mean. This is the culture that enables that.
- AdrianB1 6y ago
  >> a demographic that doesn't have recent, painful memories of slavery with horrible, tragic effects that persist to this day "Recent" means about 2-300 years? I thought slavery was abolished in US over 150 years ago, that is several generations that never met, so other than books where are the memories? Have you ever met a slave? Have you ever heard about a slave in your lifetime? Do you know anyone who ever talked to a slave?
  - chillacy 6y ago
    I think the idea is that despite the time difference, some black americans in industry find it distasteful because identity is a tricky thing which persists. Though this HN thread is really missing that perspective... Anyways, there are plenty of southerners who care a great deal about confederate icons despite being just as far apart in time, why do they care about statues and flags of people who they have never met, who they have never talked to? There's still some sense of being wronged (I once listened to someone from Georgea talk about Sherman's March with a great degree of pain).
  - musingsole 6y ago
    Hardly. It's more uncommon by the day, but there are living first generation descendants of American slaves (https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96581933 https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=965819...). So yeah, there's still a number of Americans who have talked to a former slave.
asjw 6y ago
Disclaimer: I'm not and English native speaker and there's no equivalent in my language, in fact they usually are not translated and used in English. (I mean, there is an equivalent, but it's never used in this context) My position about this issue is ambivalent. From a purely human standpoint I understand it, truly. When we use those terms referring to tools, I don't see much sense. When men used bulls to pull the plough it really was a master-slave relationship The bull could not be the master, even if it wanted too, a human is not strong enough to pull the plough effectively It's a symbiotic relation between two elements where one is in charge of the "intellectual" part and the other of the physical one. We can use controller and agent, but controlling is problematic too We can use manager and worker, but it still implies that there's a disparity between the two Frontend/backend doesn't fully capture what's going on We use master/slave because one side is taking all the decisions, the other is just obeying It's bad, I recognize it, and maybe it's time to change, but no amount of re-wording will change the fact that it's mainly used nowadays for tools that work that way, not for people. Maybe leader/follower looks like a better choice, but really isn't, follower sounds more dumb to me, at least slaves rebelled throughout history, followers don't. And a leader can be as bad as a master who owns slaves. Main/secondary is somewhat the best of them all, but it only works for systems were any secondary node can be promoted to replace the main in case of failures, which is not always the case. Bull/man is not main/secondary for example.
- chinesempire 6y ago
  What about brain/arm?
  - asjw 6y ago
    Thinking about it, brains/muscle doesn't sound so bad Or master/blaster as in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
excerionsforte 6y ago
To move forward, you must be willing to make changes. If something is causing controversy, you cannot ignore it for long before it drags you and everyone else down. If you do not identify with the controversy, you should step away from it and let the others who can lead the change. You can focus your energy on things that matter to you.
Seb-C 6y ago
Next steps following this logic: - Stop using the word "communism" because it may offend ex-USSR citizens - Stop using the word "famine" because it may remind bad memories to some africans - Stop using negative words to talk about the chinese government because it could offend chinese people - Stop using the words "bible" and "jesus" because it might offend muslims The world will sure become a better place without those negative feelings...
rich_sasha 6y ago
Changing reality with language is a Soviet propaganda tool, actually more and more used elsewhere. Look at Trump, BoJo et al. It doesn’t change reality. It muddled the problem, confounds the description of the problem with the solution, and makes us forget where we come from. The shame of using the term ‘slave’ for an electronic device or ‘master’ for a Git branch is here to stay, to remind us where we come from. Erasing them is fighting history and language, and as such worse than futile. Sure, some terms are outright offensive, but this is not the case here. There are some factual errors in the article too, but I’ll leave that. As a Slav I have no issue with the term “slave”, not least because it’s not the root of the word...

30 points by glitcher 6y ago

Oh ffs. Get some education: https://www.google.com/search?q=dictionary+master&oq=dictionary+master https://www.google.com/search?q=dictionary+master&oq=diction... These are just distractions from real issues. This isn't even incremental progress; it's a conscious choice to do nothing while looking good like you're actually "doing something".

bnj 6y ago
The first definition reads, “a man who has people working for him, especially servants or slaves.” Wouldn’t that seem to justify moving in a direction of updating these terms?
- exabrial 6y ago
  I would recommend a guide on parts of speech and expanding and reading all definitions.
  - arielserafini 6y ago
    If we're being sticklers, in this context you have to take the meaning of the word "master" in relation to its counterpart, "slave"; the other definitions are irrelevant.
- Proziam 6y ago
  The first definition is marked historical. The other 3 definitions google offers make no reference to slavery unless you really want to stretch "in charge of an organization or group" just to be offended.
  - bnj 6y ago
    Personally, and perhaps I should have said this in my first comment, I would challenge the premise that the dictionary definition should be a controlling factor in responding to this whole question. For me, it's more about looking at the potential for harm. I happen to be a white man with no particular harm one way or another associated with terms like these, but I can understand how people with other experiences might feel impacted by being surrounded by terminology like this. It doesn't hurt me at all to change the terms I use, and if other people with other backgrounds think it's important to do it, I don't have any problem with that.
    - Proziam 6y ago
      My issue with this approach is this: it drags attention and headlines away from real issues. We need serious reform in our policing and prisons in the US. Every time serious reform is demanded in any real way, the distractions get brought up and the real issues are minimized. I don't believe for a moment that this is accidental. As someone who has black siblings who are now having children of their own, I am infinitely more offended that the real issues get strategically minimized. Look at the reactions to these threads for an example. Look at how many people (black and white) are saying it's an [0]"obvious distraction" or a non-issue. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/h8w36t/github_will_no_longer_use_the_term_master_as/ https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/h8w36t/github_...
      - bnj 6y ago
        I absolutely respect that, and honestly I'm not sure how much energy needs to be spent on these terms. I agree that it would be an overall negative if we allowed something that might be insignificant like these systemic terms to distract from things like legal reform. Personally, I would settle on the side of updating the terms and not being too worried about it or expending further thought, because the use of these specific master/slave terms isn't something I'm attached to. It's a habit I don't mind updating. I also think, tentatively, that it's not really for me to decide how big a deal this is. I just don't have the experience to understand how big an impact these terms might have. It seems plausible that distractors would get thrown around at a time like this to expend energy without attacking any real structures which would make life more uncomfortable, and I appreciate your bringing it up because I might not have thought about it in those terms. For myself, I'm happy for these terms to get updated, and I intend to do what I can to focus on continuing to educate myself and try to learn how I can be more effective in deconstructing things that cause harm to people, and to trying to learn more about what it means to be anti-racist. In terms of values, that's how I think I want to approach something like this, and I respect that other people have a different approach-- I don't mind, as long as the approach people take isn't rooted in things that will perpetuate violence and harm toward people.
stdbrouw 6y ago
Let's grant that a terminology change like this is just a distraction. If so, why do you get so worked up about it? Why not just say to yourself "heh, much good that'll do, but whatever" and move on?
- exabrial 6y ago
  It's exhausting watching companies that have enough capital and resources to educate, train, and employ disadvantaged Americans and give them a better life resort to pandering of the lowest level during a crisis to promote their brand. I don't wish to participate or support their ruse.
  - stdbrouw 6y ago
    But Peter Kirn, the author, is not a company, he's a musician. He's not selling music software so he can't (as per the sibling comment) racewash it.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- elif 6y ago
  The case that could be made is that the energy, time, and attention of a movement are finite, and those resources can be allocated in a way that makes us /feel/ like change is happening while, in fact, no substantive change is occurring. It can function like a pressure relief valve. An immediate example that comes to mind is the firing of 6 APD officers that discharged tasers at protestors. Subsequently, nothing structural in the police department changed, but protests dissipated because of the 'victory' and then an even worse botched arrest occured because nothing fundamental had changed.
  - jjeaff 6y ago
    Merely firing officers for wrongdoing is itself a huge departure from the norm and starts to set a precedent. Of course, it must continue even when riots aren't gathered outside the precinct.
kspacewalk2 6y ago
What's the term that's equivalent to greenwashing here? Racewashing?
happytoexplain 6y ago
While at first glance I don't see any value in changing these terms, I do think pushback of this angry tone serves to illustrate the shocking degree of negative emotional energy that people have for the topic, which ironically serves as evidence that the terms do matter, and strengthens the argument for the change.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- exabrial 6y ago
  No, not at all. Read my other comment below.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
kibibu 6y ago
The article explicitly says that Master on its own is not a problem. So, for example, creating a CD master, or remastering, is fine. The issue is with the master/slave pairing.
- tartoran 6y ago
  Yeah, I always wondered who came up with this master/slave terminology and what they had in mind. Was it a joke?
  - notajoke 6y ago
    No, I don’t think so anyway. It’s a very literal, very accurate abstraction for reasoning about the way two components in a system interact. Consider devices connected on an i2c communication bus. One device is literally acting as the master and dictating to the slaves, who have no choice in the matter. To argue that the terms should be changed is to deny the reality of the situation - some of those devices are enslaved. Not followers, slaves!
    - arielserafini 6y ago
      "very accurate"? so a "master" hard drive issues commands to a "slave" drive?
      - notajoke 6y ago
        Yes, exactly. Take IDE drives for example. To use two drives with a single cable, one is set to be the master, the other to be the slave. From that point onwards, the slave cannot write to the bus until the master gives permission.
        arielserafini 6y ago
        I was referring to newer ATA drives. Nevertheless, in your example no orders (or ownership!) are implied.
    - 6y ago
slumpt_ 6y ago
Are you a person of color? It may be relevant to whether or not you could or would likely understand adequately why this might bother someone. Edit: Downvotes won’t make this inconvenient reality go away.
- AdrianB1 6y ago
  I live in a country where slavery is something we read about from books, the master/slave terms have no race conotations. Changing established technical terms just because less than 5% of the world population has some sensitivity to history before their grand-grand parents is excessive. Don't make me remember what Italian's ancestors did to my ancestors, or else I will have to ask current Italians for reparations. Well, this sounds extremely stupid, is it?
  - slumpt_ 6y ago
    It doesn’t sound extremely stupid to me. I’m not a person of color but can imagine how it might feel like the right time to shrug certain terms out of our public discourse. That it does not upset you is of no consequence. That it may be hurtful to others has consequence. It’s very little skin off our backs in the grand scheme. If it is a hill you’d like to die on though, do as you must. I’d just suggest that there may be times things frustrate you that you do not understand, and it is then that it can be better to simply listen. Take care.
  - asjw 6y ago
    As Italian, I'm sorry for what we did And I add to what you said: don't make me remember what other Italians did to my Italian family, no more than 75 years ago.
    - AdrianB1 6y ago
      Do not be sorry for what some people 2000 years ago did to some other people; it was not you, there is nothing to be sorry about. Collective guilt and collective punishment are bad ideas.
bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago
Indeed. I'm glad people are fixing racism (read: assuaging their white guilt) by renaming things instead of agitating for health care reform (or, closer at hand: for interview process reform). Why it's almost as if this is all a distraction that effectively benefits the already comfortable...

tekcyb-org 6y ago

Hiding words from people isn't going to help or save anyone. It just supports ignorance.

britch 6y ago
No one is arguing take the word slave out of the dictionary or history books. We can call these things whatever we want. It's a name for an abstract concept. Why not change it to something that does not refer to one of the most barbaric, nightmarish relationships between people? For me personally it makes we wince whenever someone uses "master/slave." We don't need to be casually throwing around "master and slave" in a professional setting
- Valmar 6y ago
  > Why not change it to something that does not refer to one of the most barbaric, nightmarish relationships between people? Gee, maybe because it also has connotations that have nothing to do with racism or human slavery? Where does this slippery slope end? Should we change other terms in computer technology simply because some vastly small minority emotionally fragile busybodies break down at the mere sight of the word "abort" or "kill" or "terminate"? Master/slave have very well defined meanings in computer terminology ~ and spoiler alert, there are no human or racial connotations in those meanings anywhere.
  - britch 6y ago
    I think I see where you are coming from. I'm not advocating for changing "abort" or "kill" and agree they go too far. I disagree with your point that it has nothing to do with racism or human slavery. The name master/slave indicates one is giving direction and one is following direction. It's not like someone sat there thought the letters m.a.s.t.e.r sounded good and might at well be the name of bit of the system giving order. My concern is not with industry veterans, but with people being introduced to tech or non-techincal people who are brought into technical discussions. Honestly, would your rather explain a bug as "the secondary was not following the instructions from the primary" or "the slave was not following the instructions of the master" to a room full of people unfamiliar with the subject? The master/slave naming scheme is, to me, an especially bad situation. Things like whitelist/blacklist do not have the same urgency in my mind. I appreciate your concern for the slippery slope but think we can address this without falling all the way to the bottom.

Proziam 6y ago

It's remarkable how much drama is being manufactured over a non-issue. There's a zero percent chance the people putting in the effort to promote this don't realize that 'Master' is an industry term of art meaning original or reference copy.

elliekelly 6y ago
Is “slave” an industry term of art? Certainly most people are familiar with the concept of a “master copy” - keys, documents, etc. but computer networking is the only time I’ve ever encountered the word “slave” thrown around so cavalierly.
- nkurz 6y ago
  Yes, both "master" and "slave" have been used as a pair for a long time in a number of different technical fields to describe relationships between devices. Instead of computer networking, the linked article is on a site that focuses on music technology (https://cdm.link https://cdm.link). If you search (for example) [midi "slave"] you'll come up with a lot of hits using "slave" in a technical sense for electronic music. Here's a nice example page from that search, that goes farther to distinguish (technically and without irony) two different types of masters and slaves: https://steinberg.help/cubase_pro_artist/v10/en/cubase_nuendo/topics/synchronization/synchronization_master_and_slave_c.html https://steinberg.help/cubase_pro_artist/v10/en/cubase_nuend....
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  Master and slave cylinders also exist for break cylinders and guess what computer hardrives were largely historically before flash? Rotating cylinders of some sort even if the memory was tape. That are literally "driven" by the master. Having no motive of their own only driven by the master. It is a tasteless pun metaphor at worst.
nkurz 6y ago
> There's a zero percent chance the people putting in the effort to promote this don't realize that 'Master' is an industry term of art meaning original or reference copy. True, although in the case of this article it's talking more about music technology like MIDI, where rather than "original" or "reference" it usually means something closer to "leader" or "commander". But this misses the point of the article. The suggestion isn't that we should drop the historic terms to improve the precision of tech communication. Rather, the worry is that habitualizing the terms "master" and "slave" in technology desensitizes us to concept. If we accept that one device is naturally the "master" of other devices, perhaps we are more willing to accept that one human can be the master of other humans. If we accept that the role of one device is to be merely a "slave", perhaps we won't recoil sufficiently at the notion that one human might be enslave another. Certainly, one can disagree with this premise. Why should using the same language to describe one concept influence attitudes toward another? But rather than suggesting that author is pretending not to understand a standard industry term, you'd do much better to argue about the point the article is actually making.

spacephysics 6y ago

They’re coming after tech. Don’t worry, changing terminology will change the underlying issues. Just be careful not to cause thoughtcrime once neuralink is feasible in a few decades.

there_the_and 6y ago
No, the people who want this change literally built the tech. [1] All of you getting triggered and crying from the peanut gallery need to develop some perspective and go back to work. https://twitter.com/xpasky/status/1271477451756056577?s=21 https://twitter.com/xpasky/status/1271477451756056577?s=21
- spacephysics 6y ago
  Regardless of who invented it, it’s the notion of changing how one speaks, and it’s vocabulary, to gain control over people. Don’t abide by the change/are against it? Then you’re a racist fool, like all the others. It’s a move towards further tribalism. This isn’t about a functionally better term for it. It’s a push during the mob rage over names, statues, and symbols. They already want to shutdown stem, first for a day, then more. Let’s not debate these symbols, in coherent discourse, let’s label those opposed as racist, and demand change or else more chaos will ensue.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

rurban 6y ago

Another opinion: Instead for going after the words, go after the facts. The US is the world's largest slave owner state. Their prison system is the modern equivalent of a slave economy under slave jurisdiction, and the treatment of illegal foreign labor not much different. How about legal reforms?

arielserafini 6y ago
Can't we do both?
- myst 6y ago
  Why would you need to (re)invent words if there is no problem anymore?
  - arielserafini 6y ago
    So structural racism has ended?
    - asjw 6y ago
      Well, masters and slaves have existed longer before than structural racism They were already there in Babylon over 4 thousands years ago.
      - asjw 6y ago
        It's kinda depressing to see the downvote, again, because people don't know history Slavery does not imply racism, it hasn't been the case for a very long time throughout history, slaves were a social class, a synonym for what we call "working class" or they were people from conquered lands, that were enslaved as a display of suoremacy, not because of their ethnicity. They usually were of the same ethnicity. Rome had emperors who were born in Africa (Settimio Severo for example) Have the slaves suffered abuses? Yes, of course, just like working class, and farmers and other poor classes before them, have been exploited. French Revolution is all about that. They were all French against other French. Only in modern history slavery has been justified by racism (the theory that some "races" were superior to others) but it's not modern slavery that created racism, it's the opposite.

01100011 6y ago

Personally I feel like these changes are silly but it is not a hill I want to die on. I understand some may think this is a slippery slope but as a society we've been sliding down it for years now. Just make the change and move on. Focus on problems that matter.

akvadrako 6y ago
So your argument is: the slippery slope is real but we've already got too much speed so we might as well hit rock bottom?
- 01100011 6y ago
  My point is we aren't going to stop 30 years of political correctness. The inertia is there. Software already has an image problem. Fighting something like this makes our industry look bad and doesn't really help anyone or set back the PC train. We're hitting rock bottom either way. Let's not drag down the software industry in the process.

slim 6y ago

it seems the end game of this is to disappear the words slave and master from our vocabulary, so we can't express those ideas anymore and let slavery expand unhindered

tartoran 6y ago
If the words were to dissapear from the dictionay (which is not happening btw) then we’d invent others, don’t worry. I find this change somewhat futile as it will not make people less racist, but if it offends black people we could go with a diferent term, why not? I always found master/slave a bit too idiomatic. I imagined a hardrive whipping the other form time to time. This picture is painful to some, lets update it and show we’re willing to do good. Im worried though that the change will amount to these types of changes, removing statues, adding disclaimets in history books, old movies etc and then no real change (as in needed change) will emerge. Hope im wrong though
- guggle 6y ago
  > but if it offends black people we could go with a diferent term, why not? How do we know black people are offended by the terminology of midi clocks ?
ardy42 6y ago
> it seems the end game of this is to disappear the words slave and master from our vocabulary, so we can't express those ideas anymore and let slavery expand unhindered No, you're engaging in inaccurate hyperbole. The end game for these efforts will be to make "slave" a more precise and specific term, not to erase it entirely. Does the existence of the terms "pork" (pig meat) and "pig" (animal source of pork) strike you as Newspeak?
allanmacgregor 6y ago
Next Target, chess! An Inherently racist game were White fights against Black, and where the White privilege is clearly documented as White gets to move first.

TAForObvReasons 6y ago

Some tools already do this. Reason switched in 2017: https://www.reasonstudios.com/en/reason/updates/release-notes https://www.reasonstudios.com/en/reason/updates/release-note... > Reason 10.0.1 / Reason Essentials 10.0.1 Release Notes > ReWire master/mixer and slave/device is now always referred to as "host" and "device"

nowandlater 6y ago

“We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!” ― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

chrisdhoover 6y ago

Cars have master and slave cylinders. I never liked the terms because I don’t think the terms a very descriptive. Pedal cylinder and wheel cylinder describe the devices better.

barry27 6y ago

pointless arm flappery. how many people when configuring a piece of music software or hardware to be a slave get themselves a jolly thinking about how they're putting one over the downtrodden. flag me, reid. you know you want to.

hashbig 6y ago

What is that make people react to events that happen in the US differently than those outside of the US? I mean there are people who die and people who protest about a variety of different issues outside of the US (just recently protests in Hong Kong, Iraq, and Lebanon). However, it never causes this magnitude of response, from media platforms and tech companies, to music production terminology.

root_axis 6y ago

Ideas like this are a great way to signal how privileged you are. Black people being murdered by the cops don't care about master/slave jargon in technology, it's hilariously out of touch that someone would even think this is at all important with respect to the issues going on right now.

jfrankamp 6y ago
I think some people like myself see the current issue as an iceberg like problem. Systemic racism is composed of many tiny parts. This is not an either/or question, but a yes/and one. You can both not want to be killed and care about the casual and lazy use of language. We can as technologists, change this without stopping work on police reform for example. The defensiveness/resistance to change is much more interesting to me. As for signalling, Sure we don't need to advertise it to ourselves and give accolades for something so simple. But we can do the bit and move on. I guess a lot of people are in love with the idea that if doing something is good then it must be being done in order to be _seen_ as doing good. That is bullshit unless you happen to know intent.
- hckr_news 6y ago
  Good point. Micro aggressions add up if you will.
  - sukilot 6y ago
    Somehow people forgot that "micro" was part of "micro aggressions". When you are in a comfortable space where macro aggressions are absent, it's worth looking at micro agressions. I'd rather GitHub keep "master" and have a onhover tooltip in the web UI showing a quote of the day about modern slavery or racism and linking to a way to take action.
- root_axis 6y ago
  I think now is the worst possible time to delve into this issue. America doesn't pay attention to anything for long, especially issues related to systemic racism. Right now when we have the ear of America we can't afford to squander that attention on trivialities that don't affect the lives or outcomes of oppressed people. The dynamics of racial discourse over the last decade means unimportant issues like this will only be used as an excuse to shut down the conversation around the issues that really do matter, yet we don't get anything material in return for dying on this hill, this is just social justice theater meant to make privileged people feel good about themselves.

ohgodplsno 6y ago

White people fighting worthless causes to feel good about themselves and patting themselves on the back because they fought away racism by changing names, episode 2345. But sure, go ahead, make the term disappear. That will surely fix the underlying issue.

guggle 6y ago

There we go again with a Rubocop-like complaint. Are we at the pinnacle of ridicule yet ? Because I don't think I can take anymore. The amount of bigotry in the news is puzzling.

rrradical 6y ago

A lot of the other comments here seem absurd to me. We should all be able to imagine terminology that would be repulsive. (I.e., imagine if some tech term or project name were a racial slur. Would you really argue against changing it?). So yea, there's a line to draw somewhere; we can't say every technical term is immune from critique. So then the argument is that in this particular case it's just not a big deal and people shouldn't be upset about it. Well, if you're saying that, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that your recent ancestors didn't have to deal with slavery! What percentage of people in tech are Black? Some single digit percentage? What if tech were 95% Black? Would we really say master/slave? Of course not. That wording has a lot of baggage for some people! So even if 9 out of 10 people don't have a problem with the word and see this as a PC slippery slope, that doesn't mean the minority is wrong to request changes. It's not difficult to change the terminology, and it helps some people, so why fight it.

noncoml 6y ago
Master is a word. Slave is a word. Being words, they have a meaning. In the context that are being used, it describes the abstraction very well. Is slavery absolutely wrong? Of course! That doesn't mean we will have to ban the words..
- ardy42 6y ago
  > Master is a word. Slave is a word. Being words, they have a meaning. And emotional content, which may differ from person to person. Society is not made up of robots. > In the context that are being used, it describes the abstraction very well. It's also gauche, at best.
  - noncoml 6y ago
    You, and I, are responsible for our own emotions. Once we start going down that road it will be very easy to do away with free speech because “emotions”. And I say that as an extremely sensitive person.
    - 6y ago

jdmg94 6y ago

I'm all for these changes on a personal level, but when a company like Github (and by extension MS) makes a PR move virtue signaling like they actually did something then we should be skeptic, because they have time and time again supported ICE and other law-enforcement that tells a very different story.

glitcher 6y ago

I was hesitant to submit this article because it seems extremely insignificant in the broader context of current societal changes. But then it made me ponder the wide extent to which current events are causing people of all walks of life to question and reevaluate even the smallest details of everything around us. Do I think that the proposed changes would make a noticeable difference to society? Probably not. Ultimately do I care if this specific effort succeeds or fails? Nope, don't really care either way. However, I do think the broader discussion about questioning how we use language, and where certain colloquialisms originated, is important. But I do see opinions at both extreme ends of this topic which are not trying to have good faith discussions, and instead are focused on the absolute worst case scenarios. Maybe the reactions to this story are even more significant than the story itself.

nkurz 6y ago
It's a good article. Thanks for submitting it! Perhaps reflexively, I tend to disagree with its conclusions, but it certainly makes me doubt myself. I was going to resubmit it if it didn't gain traction. I do think you should have gone with something closer to the original title, though. It doesn't quite fit exactly, but it does if you leave out a comma and one word: "Let’s dump master-slave terms: they’re vague and we’re better off without them". Maybe you still able to edit it?
ffn 6y ago
> Maybe the reactions to this story are even more significant than the story itself. That's the problem though - by focusing undue politicized attention onto an ultimately irrelevant piece of terminology opinion, we've detracted from the real problem at hand (regardless if think the real issue at hand is systemic racism oppressing minorities or "SJW"s destroying our institutions). When you attach the emotional baggage of known hotbed political issues to trivial things asking for people's opinion,we know from the works of psychologists like Jon Haidt and stuff, that these opinions quickly enter into the realm of the sacred. This forces us to first have a visceral emotion reaction, then find all sorts of reasons to back-up our initial response without any regard for counterpoints. In other words, invitations to bikeshed like this one can't lead to any meaningful or sensible debate because there was never at any substance to debate - just emotional baggage from a much more politicized topic that keeps everyone arguing BTW, you can recognize this as a cognitive trap to bikeshed while missing the point by considering the hypothetical scenario if a developer one day decided to up and just publish some patch notes to the effect of "master records now renamed to release records to be more semantic", would anyone bat an eye?

MintelIE 6y ago

This is really creepy and I have an intense dislike for the people behind it. Nobody alive today was a slave and choosing to become ass hurt at industry standard terms, which aren't even racial in nature (every race has been enslaved), isn't acceptable. I never used Github as my primary host for projects, merely as a social network to show off my projects. But I'll be moving away from them now because I simply don't want to see crazy lefties redefining my language to suit their whims. And there's no discussion at all, it's all unilateral or you're a Nazi. OK then.

noncoml 6y ago

Next, we should stop using male/female for connectors.

nkurz 6y ago
This suggestion was in fact made at the bottom of the article: Bonus footnote – male and female? Switch to “plug” and “socket.” This change is tougher, though, because there’s no easy abbreviation to ‘m’ and ‘f’ for text that is tougher to change. But the terms are clearer and … you know, less gross.
- noncoml 6y ago
  I was being sarcastic.. :/
  - baggy_trough 6y ago
    There's no bottom to this rat hole.

vector_spaces 6y ago

If your initial response to this is negative, and you aren't a member of a demographic that doesn't have recent, painful memories of slavery with horrible, tragic effects that persist to this day, then you really need to check yourself. For some people who've been through this trauma, the words "master" and "slave" evoke one painful meaning first, before the alternative meaning is understood. If you've never personally experienced something like this, I've read it described as being punched in the stomach. And it's wholely unnecessary, so why not change it? Words matter. Maybe they don't to you, but trust that people aren't lying when they say it does to them. I'm super disappointed by the callous response to this: when people talk about gatekeeping in tech, or the myriad failures of tech to be accessible to marginalized people, this is what they mean. This is the culture that enables that.

AdrianB1 6y ago
>> a demographic that doesn't have recent, painful memories of slavery with horrible, tragic effects that persist to this day "Recent" means about 2-300 years? I thought slavery was abolished in US over 150 years ago, that is several generations that never met, so other than books where are the memories? Have you ever met a slave? Have you ever heard about a slave in your lifetime? Do you know anyone who ever talked to a slave?
- chillacy 6y ago
  I think the idea is that despite the time difference, some black americans in industry find it distasteful because identity is a tricky thing which persists. Though this HN thread is really missing that perspective... Anyways, there are plenty of southerners who care a great deal about confederate icons despite being just as far apart in time, why do they care about statues and flags of people who they have never met, who they have never talked to? There's still some sense of being wronged (I once listened to someone from Georgea talk about Sherman's March with a great degree of pain).
- musingsole 6y ago
  Hardly. It's more uncommon by the day, but there are living first generation descendants of American slaves (https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96581933 https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=965819...). So yeah, there's still a number of Americans who have talked to a former slave.

asjw 6y ago

Disclaimer: I'm not and English native speaker and there's no equivalent in my language, in fact they usually are not translated and used in English. (I mean, there is an equivalent, but it's never used in this context) My position about this issue is ambivalent. From a purely human standpoint I understand it, truly. When we use those terms referring to tools, I don't see much sense. When men used bulls to pull the plough it really was a master-slave relationship The bull could not be the master, even if it wanted too, a human is not strong enough to pull the plough effectively It's a symbiotic relation between two elements where one is in charge of the "intellectual" part and the other of the physical one. We can use controller and agent, but controlling is problematic too We can use manager and worker, but it still implies that there's a disparity between the two Frontend/backend doesn't fully capture what's going on We use master/slave because one side is taking all the decisions, the other is just obeying It's bad, I recognize it, and maybe it's time to change, but no amount of re-wording will change the fact that it's mainly used nowadays for tools that work that way, not for people. Maybe leader/follower looks like a better choice, but really isn't, follower sounds more dumb to me, at least slaves rebelled throughout history, followers don't. And a leader can be as bad as a master who owns slaves. Main/secondary is somewhat the best of them all, but it only works for systems were any secondary node can be promoted to replace the main in case of failures, which is not always the case. Bull/man is not main/secondary for example.

chinesempire 6y ago
What about brain/arm?
- asjw 6y ago
  Thinking about it, brains/muscle doesn't sound so bad Or master/blaster as in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

excerionsforte 6y ago

To move forward, you must be willing to make changes. If something is causing controversy, you cannot ignore it for long before it drags you and everyone else down. If you do not identify with the controversy, you should step away from it and let the others who can lead the change. You can focus your energy on things that matter to you.

Seb-C 6y ago

Next steps following this logic: - Stop using the word "communism" because it may offend ex-USSR citizens - Stop using the word "famine" because it may remind bad memories to some africans - Stop using negative words to talk about the chinese government because it could offend chinese people - Stop using the words "bible" and "jesus" because it might offend muslims The world will sure become a better place without those negative feelings...

rich_sasha 6y ago

Changing reality with language is a Soviet propaganda tool, actually more and more used elsewhere. Look at Trump, BoJo et al. It doesn’t change reality. It muddled the problem, confounds the description of the problem with the solution, and makes us forget where we come from. The shame of using the term ‘slave’ for an electronic device or ‘master’ for a Git branch is here to stay, to remind us where we come from. Erasing them is fighting history and language, and as such worse than futile. Sure, some terms are outright offensive, but this is not the case here. There are some factual errors in the article too, but I’ll leave that. As a Slav I have no issue with the term “slave”, not least because it’s not the root of the word...