5 ms·

Linus Torvalds banishes masters, slaves and blacklists from the Linux kernel

23 points by Alupis 6y ago

truthwhisperer 6y ago
yes very important. People usually associate master and slave with the 200 year old slave history. Sure they used a lot of commits and rebases. "You put the cotton in the wrong basket. Ok sorry let's rebase ... or Henry is not allowed the pick corn, put him on the blacklist" /sarcasm. Yes, the kind of discussion is that prove that IT has totally lost affection with reality due to the golden chains (high paycheck high mortgage) and believe that societies can be modelled according to their truth.
fxtentacle 6y ago
I believe he said that those terms should be avoided, if possible, for new systems, but that they remain perfectly OK to use with old existing APIs. So what a misleading clickbait title.
MindGods 6y ago
See the lively discussion from about a day ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23810780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23810780
- ThrowawayR2 6y ago
  Also discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23819763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23819763 It's a pity there's no duplicate article button so that mods can be alerted to mark articles as such or merge the discussion.
chillacy 6y ago
> Blacklists are to become either “denylists” or “blocklists” and whitelists will become “allowlists” or “passlists”. I'm glad they chose allow/denylist instead of another often proposed redlist/greenlist. From a language learning point of view it's much more clear than having to figure out the local customs on how colors map to concepts. (e.g. a red market in asia = stocks went up, green = stocks went down)
- donatj 6y ago
  I mean on the one hand stoplights are pretty universal. On the other hand, redlist just pushes the "race issue" from one race onto another.
  - robbrown451 6y ago
    Not really on the race issue. The difference is that "black" is an accepted, common term for people with noticeable sub-Saharan African ancestry (or who identify as such). So using the same term to essentially mean "bad" is problematic. "Red" is no longer common at all for referring to Native Americans (even less so as of this week thanks to getting rid of the name Redskins), and I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who identifies as a "red person." Also, red in this usage would entail more of a stretch to consider that it means "bad." It just means "stop," which is far more neutral.
    - donatj 6y ago
      I'm guessing you don't live near an Indian reservation and have no idea what you're talking about. I hear the term "red man" probably a couple times a month. Also: see the Washington Redskins
- robbrown451 6y ago
  I'm fine with his choices, but the meaning of red and green as stop and go has become quite universal. Is there anywhere in the world that doesn't have traffic lights? (ok, anywhere in the world that you'd be likely to see a linux device) I see it regularly extended to such things as "accept" vs "decline" on phone screens when a call comes in. Applying those colors to stock market charts is not a particularly natural extension of the concept, though. Although I'd pick green as "up", still, it isn't as direct as something like allow/pass or deny/block. Those fall well into red light / green light territory to me.
  - seanmcdirmid 6y ago
    Bhutan doesn't have any traffic lights. They tried one out briefly, but the people didn't like it. They do have some programmers, probably more than a few Linux installations. Not sure if they have any Linux developers, but it wouldn't be incredibly surprising if they had a couple.
rvz 6y ago
An excerpt from the coding-style.rst: > Exceptions for introducing new usage is to maintain a userspace ABI/API, or when updating code for an existing (as of 2020) hardware or protocol specification that mandates those terms. You know that Linus is "drawing the line somewhere" and he is only banning this for new usages. The PC crowd may still question why not remove "all" usages including old code with these "offensive" terms. (It's really isn't realistic for the Linux Kernel.) You're more than welcome to recommend to remove all usages including historical ones to Linus. /s
- happytoexplain 6y ago
  >The PC crowd may still question why not remove "all" usages Wouldn't that be a valid question from any curious person?
einpoklum 6y ago
Like in real life - slavery isn't really banished, it's transformed into a less brittle, and perhaps more insidious, social relationship: Former bound slaves are now employed as salaried servants, free to leave at any time. Except if they want to earn enough to feed their families, that is. So now, we still have masters and servants in the kernels, but the names are changed: > In their place coders will be expected to use alternatives > such as “primary” and “secondary” relationships, or refer > to “leaders” and “followers”, or even “directors” and > “performers”. If it's _actually_ primary foo's and secondary foo's, then fine; but I suspect these are just euphemisms. Now, in software, the effect is just a bit of obfuscation. What's annoying is the reflection of the real-life trade not to call a spade a spade. PS - I'm fine with changes like "denylists" instead of "blacklists".
- thrownaway954 6y ago
  so what are your suggestions then?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - einpoklum 6y ago
    Call things what they are. If one entity gives orders to other entities and they must carry them out, then don't call these the "primary" and the "secondary" entities, because then you've given them a vague and non-descriptive name. I'm not saying you _have_ to use "master" and "slave" when there are other reasonably descriptive names, just don't avoid it artificially because it reminds you of bad things.
    - thrownaway954 6y ago
      again... what are your suggestions then? that whole response was not "calling things what they are", it deflecting from actually answering the question. if you don't have good idea of the terms to use, you can just say that you don't know.
- 6y ago
s9w 6y ago
I liked the old linus better.

23 points by Alupis 6y ago

yes very important. People usually associate master and slave with the 200 year old slave history. Sure they used a lot of commits and rebases. "You put the cotton in the wrong basket. Ok sorry let's rebase ... or Henry is not allowed the pick corn, put him on the blacklist" /sarcasm. Yes, the kind of discussion is that prove that IT has totally lost affection with reality due to the golden chains (high paycheck high mortgage) and believe that societies can be modelled according to their truth.

fxtentacle 6y ago

I believe he said that those terms should be avoided, if possible, for new systems, but that they remain perfectly OK to use with old existing APIs. So what a misleading clickbait title.

MindGods 6y ago

See the lively discussion from about a day ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23810780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23810780

ThrowawayR2 6y ago
Also discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23819763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23819763 It's a pity there's no duplicate article button so that mods can be alerted to mark articles as such or merge the discussion.

chillacy 6y ago

> Blacklists are to become either “denylists” or “blocklists” and whitelists will become “allowlists” or “passlists”. I'm glad they chose allow/denylist instead of another often proposed redlist/greenlist. From a language learning point of view it's much more clear than having to figure out the local customs on how colors map to concepts. (e.g. a red market in asia = stocks went up, green = stocks went down)

donatj 6y ago
I mean on the one hand stoplights are pretty universal. On the other hand, redlist just pushes the "race issue" from one race onto another.
- robbrown451 6y ago
  Not really on the race issue. The difference is that "black" is an accepted, common term for people with noticeable sub-Saharan African ancestry (or who identify as such). So using the same term to essentially mean "bad" is problematic. "Red" is no longer common at all for referring to Native Americans (even less so as of this week thanks to getting rid of the name Redskins), and I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who identifies as a "red person." Also, red in this usage would entail more of a stretch to consider that it means "bad." It just means "stop," which is far more neutral.
  - donatj 6y ago
    I'm guessing you don't live near an Indian reservation and have no idea what you're talking about. I hear the term "red man" probably a couple times a month. Also: see the Washington Redskins
robbrown451 6y ago
I'm fine with his choices, but the meaning of red and green as stop and go has become quite universal. Is there anywhere in the world that doesn't have traffic lights? (ok, anywhere in the world that you'd be likely to see a linux device) I see it regularly extended to such things as "accept" vs "decline" on phone screens when a call comes in. Applying those colors to stock market charts is not a particularly natural extension of the concept, though. Although I'd pick green as "up", still, it isn't as direct as something like allow/pass or deny/block. Those fall well into red light / green light territory to me.
- seanmcdirmid 6y ago
  Bhutan doesn't have any traffic lights. They tried one out briefly, but the people didn't like it. They do have some programmers, probably more than a few Linux installations. Not sure if they have any Linux developers, but it wouldn't be incredibly surprising if they had a couple.

rvz 6y ago

An excerpt from the coding-style.rst: > Exceptions for introducing new usage is to maintain a userspace ABI/API, or when updating code for an existing (as of 2020) hardware or protocol specification that mandates those terms. You know that Linus is "drawing the line somewhere" and he is only banning this for new usages. The PC crowd may still question why not remove "all" usages including old code with these "offensive" terms. (It's really isn't realistic for the Linux Kernel.) You're more than welcome to recommend to remove all usages including historical ones to Linus. /s

happytoexplain 6y ago
>The PC crowd may still question why not remove "all" usages Wouldn't that be a valid question from any curious person?

einpoklum 6y ago

Like in real life - slavery isn't really banished, it's transformed into a less brittle, and perhaps more insidious, social relationship: Former bound slaves are now employed as salaried servants, free to leave at any time. Except if they want to earn enough to feed their families, that is. So now, we still have masters and servants in the kernels, but the names are changed: > In their place coders will be expected to use alternatives > such as “primary” and “secondary” relationships, or refer > to “leaders” and “followers”, or even “directors” and > “performers”. If it's _actually_ primary foo's and secondary foo's, then fine; but I suspect these are just euphemisms. Now, in software, the effect is just a bit of obfuscation. What's annoying is the reflection of the real-life trade not to call a spade a spade. PS - I'm fine with changes like "denylists" instead of "blacklists".

thrownaway954 6y ago
so what are your suggestions then?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- einpoklum 6y ago
  Call things what they are. If one entity gives orders to other entities and they must carry them out, then don't call these the "primary" and the "secondary" entities, because then you've given them a vague and non-descriptive name. I'm not saying you _have_ to use "master" and "slave" when there are other reasonably descriptive names, just don't avoid it artificially because it reminds you of bad things.
  - thrownaway954 6y ago
    again... what are your suggestions then? that whole response was not "calling things what they are", it deflecting from actually answering the question. if you don't have good idea of the terms to use, you can just say that you don't know.
6y ago

s9w 6y ago

I liked the old linus better.