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When the terrorist group ISIS rose to prominence in 2014, many product names and even company names were changed to avoid connection with ISIS. For instance, in

When the terrorist group ISIS rose to prominence in 2014, many product names and even company names were changed to avoid connection with ISIS. For instance, in the computer world, Cornell's Isis distributed computing library was renamed Vsync. These changes seemed to be uncontroversial; I didn't find any HN discussion of the Vsync name change. This shows that there is precedence for widespread name changes if a name becomes offensive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_changes_due_to_the_Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_changes_due_to_the_Islami...

luckylion 6y ago
However, master/slave aren't the names of companies, they're names of concepts. There is no Slavery, Inc selling digital picture frames and refusing to change their name because they like being associated with Slavery. This is more like "killing a process" ("but people get killed"), "deleting a file" ("minorities are getting erased", "you aren't even removing anything, you're just changing some bytes, so it isn't even accurate"), "touching a file" etc. It matters what you read into it, but that's mostly you, not the word. Is MariaDB sexist because it's a software that is expected to silently and flawlessly do things for you for free so of course it was given a female name, or is it a programmer's dedication to his daughter?
DarthGhandi 6y ago
That's an unimpressive list of name changes. A University login system, a chocolate maker, a PE firm, few small businesses, a software release name, the fictional organisation from a cartoon. I'd be more interested in who didn't change their names despite the connotation. There's a town in Australia called Isis, who didn't change, nor did their local football team called the Isis devils. Going through Wikipedia there's also Oxford University's magazine http://isismagazine.org.uk/ http://isismagazine.org.uk/ A peer reviewed journal: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/isis/current https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/isis/current A British prison: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_Prison_Isis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_Prison_Isis USGS planetary software used by NASA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Software_for_Imagers_and_Spectrometers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Software_for_Imager... A Dutch aerospace company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovative_Solutions_In_Space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovative_Solutions_In_Space
celeritascelery 6y ago
> precedence for widespread name changes if a name becomes offensive. But who is actually offended by the term blacklist/whitelist? This seems to be more like trying to fabricate "potential offenses" out of whole cloth then deal with offensive words?

luckylion 6y ago

However, master/slave aren't the names of companies, they're names of concepts. There is no Slavery, Inc selling digital picture frames and refusing to change their name because they like being associated with Slavery. This is more like "killing a process" ("but people get killed"), "deleting a file" ("minorities are getting erased", "you aren't even removing anything, you're just changing some bytes, so it isn't even accurate"), "touching a file" etc. It matters what you read into it, but that's mostly you, not the word. Is MariaDB sexist because it's a software that is expected to silently and flawlessly do things for you for free so of course it was given a female name, or is it a programmer's dedication to his daughter?

DarthGhandi 6y ago

That's an unimpressive list of name changes. A University login system, a chocolate maker, a PE firm, few small businesses, a software release name, the fictional organisation from a cartoon. I'd be more interested in who didn't change their names despite the connotation. There's a town in Australia called Isis, who didn't change, nor did their local football team called the Isis devils. Going through Wikipedia there's also Oxford University's magazine http://isismagazine.org.uk/ http://isismagazine.org.uk/ A peer reviewed journal: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/isis/current https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/isis/current A British prison: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_Prison_Isis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_Prison_Isis USGS planetary software used by NASA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Software_for_Imagers_and_Spectrometers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Software_for_Imager... A Dutch aerospace company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovative_Solutions_In_Space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovative_Solutions_In_Space

celeritascelery 6y ago

> precedence for widespread name changes if a name becomes offensive. But who is actually offended by the term blacklist/whitelist? This seems to be more like trying to fabricate "potential offenses" out of whole cloth then deal with offensive words?