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Remove some offensive/archaic terminology from OpenSSL
- adrianN 6y agoI really don't understand how it helps against racism to purge language from certain words in contexts where they're not even applied to humans.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoFeels good without effort. Meaningful progress takes enormous amounts of time and tireless efforts, comparatively speaking. A pull request, many even, isn’t going to fix systemic injustices and inequalities at societal levels. Slavery continues to exist today in the 21st century [1]. I’m unsure how some feel this is the case, but the bluntness seems necessary. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century (The International Labour Organization estimates that, by their definitions, over 40 million people are in some form of slavery today.)
- downerending 6y agoPretty much. Tutoring a minority kid would actually make a difference, but oh so much work. Much easier to change my FB background image to something trendy and downvote the "racists" who don't instead.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoNot just tutoring minority kids. Advocating for efforts against police brutality. Advocating for prison reform, drug decriminalization, ending cash bail, free school meals (breakfast and lunch) for all children K-12 as well as improvements to educational infrastructure in disadvantaged communities. Structural changes, pulling strings that control the system. Alas, these are not commits you can make and then move on. These must become your hobbies if you intend to see meaningful change in our lifetimes. Some of these listed above are my hobbies, and I hope they become yours if these causes matter to you.
- downerending 6y agoIMO, only real actions, like tutoring minority kids, matters. You can "advocate" up, down, left, and sideways, and it will make not one whit of difference. Want to change the world? Do the work.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoI have had moderate success speaking with political representatives at local, state, and federal levels on these issues. Beyond that, campaign contributions to those who support these efforts (maxing out FEC contribution limits). Public policy changes are operating at scale (for example, over a million felons who have served their time in Florida have had their right to vote restored, which matters quite a bit). Advocacy is work, and costly.
- BolexNOLA 6y agoSo you’re saying the only way for stuff to get done is for everyone to be “boots on the ground” and to never fund or work for advocacy organizations?
- ryan29 6y agoIt doesn't fix anything directly, but it's an easy, effective way to show support for people who have been disenfranchised. And it's the sum total that counts, so every little thing makes a difference. One project making changes doesn't have much of an impact, but if every project on GitHub did the same that would be a very clear message the tech industry isn't satisfied with the status quo. Sometimes all it takes to stop a bully is for one person to speak up because then others that might have been keeping silent will feel more comfortable speaking up as well.
- justicezyx 6y agoOne can actually support oppressed people around them. Why does someone want to show support to people who do not need that support after all?
- dwd 6y agoVirtue signalling, plain and simple. Makes you look good to your peers without doing anything of substance. I don't get why there isn't a sustained campaign to reach out for commitments from elected representative while they are largely working from home and more immune from the political pressures that keep them in lockstep maintaining the status quo. Now is the time to push for change from those who hold the power of the purse and frame laws.
- apatters 6y agoThis realization is what motivated me to start participating in charity over the past few years. There has never been as much empty virtue signalling by privileged people as there is today. They declare the deck chairs on the Titanic to be offensive, remove a few of them, congratulate themselves and call it a day like their responsibility is absolved. Maybe they go the extra mile and try to get somebody fired for not speaking the same doublespeak as them. But fixating on their theater achieves nothing. It just gives them more of the attention they crave. So I decided instead to donate my time and my money to good causes and actually help make things better, because this is in short supply. The virtue signallers may or may not take note, but it doesn't matter. What matters is that if they're going to absolve themselves of doing the real work, someone else has to step up.
- dwd 6y agoI avoid simply giving money to a lot of large charities. Fancy offices with executive level pay while they largely rely on donations and volunteers to do the real work for free. Kind of a corporation version of virtue signalling. I'd rather donate food to the local animal refuge than give to them.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoSome large charities are very effectively run. Charity water comes to mind. I think it’s important to not throw out the baby with the bathwater, and that donating to large nonprofits can be an effective use of resources if you’ve done your homework.
- BolexNOLA 6y agoWhy is the assumption that if people want to remove symbols/language that it means they aren’t also doing “real” work too? We can walk and chew bubblegum at the same time. We also should be able to acknowledge that terminology/symbols/language reinforce issues. If they weren’t significant, then we wouldn’t have so many people defending them.
- userbinator 6y agoIt's the rise of "radical political correctness". IMHO things like this should be treated like the trolls they are; and not fed, lest important projects get overrun by this BS.
- vore 6y agoBecause ultimately code is read by humans and some of them don't enjoy having to be reminded about slavery when reading code, and we can do without these inconsiderate metaphors. I think at large, while some changes might be more performative than others, removing master/slave terminology seems pretty clear cut.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ScottFree 6y agoIt doesn't. That's not the point. It never was. "A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to." -Anthony Daniels
- adrianN 6y agoI don't believe political correctness is a hidden agenda to control the populace. It's much easier to explain by well meaning people trying to help.
- downerending 6y agoSomeone (maybe the Russians?) had a folk saying: May the gods please save us from those who are only trying to help.
- wayneftw 6y agoIt can be both. During Operation Mockingbird [0] the CIA found that they only had to infiltrate a relatively small nimber of the news outlets in order to sway public opinion. They placed stories with both cooperating and unwitting journalists. Useful idiots can be very useful. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
- 082349872349872 6y agoIt's not as if the vocabulary in tech doesn't change* every few decades anyway. In this case the vocabulary change is intentional, but even if one believes it misguided, it's hard to argue it's harmful. * Myer and Sutherlands "On the Design of Display Processors" gives some sense of how we go around in circles (or, hopefully, spirals), but I'm unaware of any reference for how vocabulary changes while the concepts remain unaltered. An example might be "prefix sum" calculations (or whatever they're called on GPUs nowadays), as these have appeared under different names back to before computers. (when hand calculating, in the days when "computer" was a job description, not a machine, and US Navy calculations took weeks to run, shallow parallel algorithms could save substantial sums)
- dx87 6y agoIt seems easy to argue that it's harmful. They're actively wasting people's time, and making it seem like civil rights activists don't have any legitimate complaints if this is the kind of stuff they spend their energy on.
- downerending 6y agoThis is an important point. Pushing trivia like this uses up the attention and good will that people have to spend on the larger issues. If you want to change the world, lead with what actually matters.
- zzo38computer 6y ago> In this case the vocabulary change is intentional, but even if one believes it misguided, it's hard to argue it's harmful. Often it isn't harmful, but sometimes it can be, so that is why to be careful of it, I think. Altering comments (and documentation) is probably not harmful (as long as it remains clear, or in some cases, becomes even more clearly meaning), but altering names of commands and other stuff (especially if it is an exposed API) is more problematic, I think. (Changing them to same words as other things to be confusing, or breaking URLs, or whatever, is also harmful, though.) I think that it is best to change the vocabulary when the concepts are altered, and to leave it the same when the concepts remain unaltered, although I am not trying to stop you or anyone from writing what they want to write; if they don't like these words, change them, especially if the new words are a better description of it anyways. (But I believe in freedom of speech: If someone else doesn't want to change their program or document, don't force them to do so. But I also dislike copyright: I believe that if you don't like their program or document or whatever, you should be allowed to make (and use, and distribute) a modified copy.)
- sbarre 6y agoHumans have to use and read the code. The word "slave" obviously doesn't mean anything to you, but is it not within your comprehension to see how it could be a painful word to encounter, in any context, for some of our fellow humans?
- adrianN 6y agoI believe that almost everybody who is able to read code is also able to understand that words have different meanings in different contexts and a RNG really doesn't suffer if it's a slave to another RNG.
- BolexNOLA 6y agoIf you can’t see why the term “slave” might cause issues I don’t know what to tell you.
- adrianN 6y agoI really don't see it. For example the term pet is perfectly fine when applied to a dog, but very questionable when applied to a human. Should we rename pets to something else?
- sbarre 6y agoI don't know how else to put this but you really seem to lack empathy for your fellow human beings. You are turning people's real pain into a pedantic discussion about language and context, and ignoring the real-world context of this specific scenario. The tone deafness is astounding.
- distantaidenn 6y agoIf I am incorrect, I do apologize, but I assume you are not a person of color, or perhaps you come from a country in which you are the majority. I am a P.O.C, and these small things do set a bit of a tingle in my mind when I hear them. As a software developer, I cringe a bit to myself when I have to say terms like "whitelist" and "blacklist" or "master/slave" Obviously to you they may just be innocuous words, but think about what they represent: good vs. not good. Growing up in America, these terms hold a rather disgusting history -- and upon hearing them, I find it difficult to remove that context. I don't think this has any racist connotations, but it can and does make some people feel needlessly uncomfortable. It's a small change, and I applaud their efforts.
- ARandomerDude 6y agoWhite/black for good/evil predate American slavery by a few millennia. They aren't racial terms, they relate to light and darkness (as in EM radiation).
- distantaidenn 6y agoConsider this thought experiment: if you were a P.O.C., say black for example -- how would you feel growing up seeing that all things bad or ill are associated with the term that your people have been called. Blacklist, blackball, black magic, blackmail, and the list goes on. You might have never thought of these things, simply because it may not a part of your daily life. If we can fix this in even a small way: then why not?
- ARandomerDude 6y agoI hope I would have the clarity of mind to realize that just because I have taken offense doesn't mean anyone has given offense.
- wayneftw 6y agoI don’t think I’ve seen very many people that are purely black. Most of them look like they are shades of brown to me.
- tekproxy 6y agoIt clears the mind of problematic thoughts. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak#Vocabulary https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak#Vocabulary
- GuiA 6y agoFrom the diffs: master -> changed to main/parent (depending on context) slave -> changed to child blacklist -> changed to blocklist black magic -> changed to magic white space -> changed to whitespace/empty space (depending on context) https://github.com/openssl/openssl/pull/12089/files https://github.com/openssl/openssl/pull/12089/files
- bioinformatics 6y agoWouldn't it be great when the parent node/process needs to kill the child node/process?
- downerending 6y agoSo, like abortion?
- Covzire 6y agoI long for the days when context was king and our institutions weren't ruled by the emotionally fragile lunatics.
- zzo38computer 6y agoI don't really like the term "white space" either, because the background is not necessarily white. But, that is the word we use. At least, making it into a compound like "whitespace" might be better, in case in some contexts you need to avoid to confuse with "white space" in pictures where much of it is left white, and also "whitespace" might be better for dictionary stuff. A variant of PNG called PNG-16 uses the term "black magic", and it is appropriate there, because it is indeed black!
- juskrey 6y agoSocial progress leaves the trace by giving old words new meanings, regress - by hiding old meanings behind new words.
- vore 6y agoThese are technical terms that are evoking real-life concepts, not the other way around. Words can be reappropriated, yes, but only by the group the word affects: otherwise, you haven't been at the other end of the word and it seems out of place to dictate how they should feel about it, as an outsider.
- Mindless2112 6y agoTaken to its ultimate end, we will have to have Colors.Black == Colors.White And, courtesy of Douglas Adams: > "Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.”
- kepler1 6y agoYou know, the problem with letting people's sudden emotions swing you back and forth without possibility of reasonable discussion is that some day it will come to bite you in the ass. That is, in terms of what kind of behavior you're incentivizing. In this kind of environment, people who raise even reasonable objections to questionable changes will be labeled as the enemy by fanatics. Like this guy. I don't know where he gets such a motivation to destroy or rewrite this corner of the world because he thinks it's his responsibility to stamp out oppression in C code. Which is about as far from the social problem as you can get. The list of words being considered as prejudiced include: -- parent/child -- whitelist/blacklist Some of this is really ridiculous. How are we to decide what terms are offensive enough? Vote? There are going to be objections at some level about any term, by someone out there. Someone needs to be an authority and say how much self-censoring is reasonable, and what terms are reasonable to keep. I object to the term SSL. It is a deep insult to my culture. We should rename it because of that. Who are you to question my being offended? Please let this issue not be determined by this guy or this ilk. Or at least, let this argument settle for a few months and see whether it still makes sense before getting caught up in the heat of the moment. Sometimes, time tells whether you were reasonable or not.
- sbarre 6y agoHere's an easy test: does it offend someone? yes? then consider changing it. "Is it offensive enough?" is a really bad hill to die on.
- fiblye 6y agoI think X is correct and Y is offensive, is what some people say. You’ll also find people saying they find Y correct and X offensive. Giving in without question that easily can result in others being offended. Sometimes you have people who’ll take a mile if you give them an inch. Some things are clearly offensive, sure, but if most people are asking “how is this even a problem?”, it’s not good to just change it because they say it bothers them.
- sbarre 6y ago
- Ghjklov 6y ago"SSL" kind of makes me think of "slave"...I mean the whole SL and all...kind of bothersome. Think they should change it to something else. Everytime I see the letter "S", I can't help but think of the word...
- bioinformatics 6y agoNo issues with the SS part of it? ßL would be much better
- Ghjklov 6y agoYou're right, that too... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS This is a travesty. Honestly don't see myself using or promoting Open* anymore until they get this issue sorted out.
- Covzire 6y agoSo is LibreSSL like a "freed slave" or a trolling oxymoron, a "free slave"? Better ban it just to be safe.
- userbinator 6y agoPeople will always find something to be offended about, and it's sad that we as a society have let this "weaponisation of offence" grow unhindered and some people have even encouraged it. I feel sorry for people who do things like this, only because if https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21833377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21833377 is any indication, 4chan is about to make his life very very miserable. "Inclusiveness includes stupidity too."
- Trumpi 6y agoHere is one of my favorite sections from 1984. Maybe there is some relevance to draw from it; maybe not. 'You haven't a real appreciation of Newspeak, Winston,' he said almost sadly. 'Even when you write it you're still thinking in Oldspeak. I've read some of those pieces that you write in "The Times" occasionally. They're good enough, but they're translations. In your heart you'd prefer to stick to Oldspeak, with all its vagueness and its useless shades of meaning. You don't grasp the beauty of the destruction of words. Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?' Winston did know that, of course. He smiled, sympathetically he hoped, not trusting himself to speak. Syme bit off another fragment of the dark-coloured bread, chewed it briefly, and went on: 'Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we're not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak,' he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. 'Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?'
- Josh5 6y agoThe problem isn't the words that seem to offend some people, it's that people associate themselves with words that they should not. I would love to live in a world where people stop saying "I'm black" or "I'm white". Your skin has a colour, but I bet it's not one of those. Perhaps a light brown? The point is, no one alive can say they don't share some heratage with one side or another. If you are so offended by some historical act of slavery in your ancestry, then perhaps you should also carry out some due diligence and check if there is any enslavement by the part of your ancestors also? If things like this is a big deal, why are we ok with dressing up as pirates or murderers? I personally feel like the problem lies in our inability to accept some historical events as unchangeable as crap as they are, and focus instead at how wonderful our differences as a species is in the 21st century. We should be accepting humanity as the collidescope that it is rather than just "black" and "white". FFS!
- rssmllr 6y agoSome other problematic words in this repo: Parent: to orphans and those who have been in the foster care system Child: to those who cannot have offspring Sibling: to only children Dead: to those who’ve known someone who passed Disabled: to anyone with a handicap Fire: to burn victims Smart: to those with low IQ Small: to the vertically challenged I’m very glad to not see the word Zombie because that is very triggering to French Haitians. I’d also like to remind people that we need new words for male/female plugs because those terms are transphobic.
- wilt 6y agoThe problem with saying change something if it offends someone is that is open to abuse. Are you going to remove something that speaks out about a government killing its own citizens because that government finds it offensive? That would be stupid. In the case of master and slave i don't mind the defaults for new projects being changed but this new trend of going around and demanding everyone update their projects right now is just silly. You are asking people to put in a huge ammount of effort and possibly break lots of external things for the sake of making a few white guys feel like they did something.
- eesmith 6y agoThis "new trend" is at least 17 years old - https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/masterslave/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/masterslave/ . You'll note the text: > In May 2003, a black employee of the county’s Probation Department filed a discrimination complaint with the Office of Affirmative Action Compliance after spotting “master” and “slave” labels on a videotape machine, which suggest your "for the sake of making a few white guys" might not be the only purpose. Other examples have made it to HN, like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7801646 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7801646 on "Replaced occurrences of master/slave terminology with leader/follower " for Django, from 6 years ago.
- sebazzz 6y agoIt gives also ammunition to force everyone to change their current repo. If I don't change my repositories for regardless what reason there is, I risk myself now being called a racist. And that can have serious consequences (again though public rage "that company employs racists").
- raindropm 6y agoI remember my time studying Freud's sex theory in literature class and how there are symbols that signified the sexual desire scatter around the story we've read, say, the male character took his pen(phallic symbol) and pierce some hole in the pink clothes(symbolizing female), and you can see this everywhere in the text if you look for it (though Freud humorously said that sometimes cigar is just a cigar, not everything has to be about sex) At the end of the day, I cannot help but think that half of the interpretation is just what my professor just made up because she really engrossed in Freud's theory. That being said, you will see anything you really want to see, if you look for it hard enough. If you think it's there, it will be there...
- drewcoo 6y agoNote it contains this commit with the message "Fix whitespace." That is hilarious. https://github.com/openssl/openssl/pull/12089/commits/b7d2ec51cf2abf6f827c580a5ebea07acc23ee52 https://github.com/openssl/openssl/pull/12089/commits/b7d2ec...
- donmcronald 6y agoI don’t get why it’s funny. Isn’t whitespace named because of the screen color which happened to be white? Maybe I’m missing something?
- KayL 6y agoEverywhere is search black & white now. But no one cares about yellow or other. https://github.com/openssl/openssl/blob/454afd9866300b984306c5b565a9d55568a5bc50/test/property_test.c#L90 https://github.com/openssl/openssl/blob/454afd9866300b984306... Why Yellow is Groan? As someone living near to or will become a sensor place soon, I'm worried one day that's a list to remove/replace these words automatically. (or suggested not to say that) There's a country you'll get in trouble if you say that 2-digits out of 0-9
- sys_64738 6y agoWhat should tomorrow's Scrum Master be called?