Feels 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.
Pretty 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.
Not 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.
IMO, 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.
I 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).
It 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.
Virtue 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.
This 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.
I 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.
Some 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.
Why 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.
Because 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.
"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
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.
It'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)
It 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.
This 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.
> 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.)
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?
I 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.
I 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?
I 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.
Don’t be that guy. You’re derailing the conversation. No one is “banning” a word. We are saying that a term should be dropped and a more appropriate one brought into usage. No one is “banned” from saying the word slave and no one is advocating for it.
I'm not that guy, but it is a legitimate enquiry. This is currently about existing projects, old code, some of it even a bit "stale".
What about new projects, are they to avoid these words too, and what would you call that?
I wish the best to all blacks, queers, trans and minorities, as all voices are unique and important. But that doesn't mean we drop principles like liberty of speech and thought. If people are hurt, that needs to be addressed, and this (token gestures) just ain't enough.
TL;DR Going PC is not going to solve the root structural problem. Feeling good about short-term, shallow fixes are overrated.
It's not about the inanimate object that is being described, it about the human who is encountering the word.
I can certainly think of other very objectionable and hurtful words that people don't want to encounter in any context.. I am sure you can think of some words too.
Why is it so hard for you to understand that this particular word falls in that category for a large number of people.
Again, it has nothing to do with context, it has to do with THE WORD ITSELF.
Slavery is at all time highs and those in Western democracies who supposedly rail against such things benefit immensely from it.
Removing a word from a codebase does absolutely nothing to help this. Most of the people claiming they are against slavery indirectly support it daily. Most coffee on Earth is made by unpaid forced child labour. Most chocolate production relies on the same.
I'll put forward that the vast majority of people who claim to care about the usage of the word slave don't think in the slightest about the prevalent modern existence of actual slaves or will do anything to change it at their own expense. Words are cheap, slacktivism is cheap, taking personal responsibility and actively avoiding slave products is not.
> Estimates of the number of slaves today range from around 21 million to 46 million[0]
> Approximately 2.1 million children in West Africa "still do the dangerous and physically taxing work of harvesting cocoa". The report suggested that it would be an uphill battle to improve the situation. [1]
> An undercover probe has discovered child labour at farms linked to coffee giant Nespresso.[2]
> Uighurs and other minorities aren’t just being subjected to forced re-education — they’re being used as slave labor after completing their terms of “study.”
> The ASPI estimates that up to 80,000 Uighurs have been forced into labor camps this way, some of them directly after finishing their indoctrination at Chinese re-education centers. The report includes three case studies focused on factories producing goods for Nike, Adidas/Fila, and Apple. A total of 83 companies have been identified as benefiting from these practices [5]
Hopefully one day those enjoying a chocolate latte at Starbucks wearing designer clothes made by indentured workers while posting about slavery on their iPhone will see the irony. [3][4][5]
If 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.
White/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).
Consider 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?
It’s fucked up how many people will be here arguing that everything black being negative and everything white being positive predates racism.
Prepare yourself. I’ve read a lot of these threads lately and it’s really disappointing. The conversation instantly devolves into bullshit like that person in the GitHub issue claiming to be an orphan that’s offended by the term parent.
I think changing contribution guidelines and being more cognizant of offensive terms going forward is an obvious win. I’m not really sure what to think about API breaking changes though. Maybe a comment in the code linking to updated guidelines would be a pragmatic solution that doesn’t require breaking changes. It’s probably got to be assessed case by case.
I think it is better to apologise and acknowledge for terms that are offensive rather than erase them.
While removing offensive 70’s TV comedy shows is probably a good thing to avoid perpetuating unhealthy stereotypes, preventing the use of 19th century literature is less helpful because we should not forget history.
> If we can fix this in even a small way: then why not?
Wouldn't a more straightforward and sensible solution be to stop referring to people with darker skin as 'black' since, actually, they're not that colour?
And conversely 'white' skin isn't white. So let's get rid of that reference too.
I'd argue that continuing to use black / white as racial descriptions is highly offensive because it originates in the era of institutional racism and slavery. Why perpetuate that attitude?
But the issue at hand here is very important and should not be made lite of.
The first time I saw documentation guidelines was while working for a large US software house in the early 90’s. This was a marketing led initiative, along with very specific instructions about correct use of trademarks the guide was prescriptive about always using female pronouns.
Three decades later we still have significant gender bias in the industry but in my experience things have improved almost beyond recognition.
In that time, attitudes to race, gender and sexuality have advanced significantly in the US and European corporations. I still come across unacceptable attitudes and language, but open sexism, racism and anti semitism is almost non existent. Sadly this is not yet true in some of the emerging market countries I’ve worked in.
The use of language may or may not have contributed to this welcome change, but what was at the time called positive discrimination, a term that in itself is possibly no longer politically correct, did definitely draw attention to an issue that was otherwise not generally discussed at work.
The conversation about pronouns has moved on too.
My somewhat longwinded preamble does have a point, the language we use can make people think about issues they would not otherwise be aware of.
I don’t know if the terms master and servant are generally considered acceptable, my guess is master/slave is predominant because it is meaningful, short and easy to spell and in itself is not racist language.
I think that at least some of the corporate avalanche of support for the current protests is no less cynical and self serving than the political correctness in marketing of the early 90’s, but it will still result in positive change.
I have a really hard time making sense of this sentiment. You're stipulating that the words have truly no ill intent whatsoever, and yet you're happy that they're being banned?
And beyond that, does this sort of thing really belong in the top ten thousand concerns of anyone, when it comes to making the world a better place?
I ask you in earnest: What do you think of the depiction of black clothes (eg. The Matrix) as badass and the depiction of white robes (eg. religious garment, angels) as signs of purity?
I just googled what is P.O.C. (Assumed I'm right.) Then, I'm a P.O.C also. I don't have a bad feeling as you when I heard the word related to my color. (I'm not growing up or living in America)
In my country, saying the color won't hurt others (that's not offensive words). But we know when or how to say the Color will hurt them (the Color word became offensive word). (I don't know how to tell you the exact example..long story)
I'm trying to understand you.
1. Do you have any bad experience? for example, people pointed at you and say a color word hurt you. Is it very common in US?
2.
If whitelist = bad;
If blacklist = good
will you have the same feeling?
3. Do you really think white/black list linking to master/slave, or just try to avoid it in the future? (because the society telling you not to say that) [educated to feel bad and deep feeling from heart, I think that's different)
4. When will you feel good (or no bad feelings) when you see the word Black / White (or your color)? (I will feel confused if your answer is never)
I 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!
These 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.
You 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.
I 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.
In theory, sure.. but we're not talking about "in theory" here.. Everyone on here tonight is hiding behind really dumb hyperbolic "what if"s, and it's pretty disappointing to see the tone deafness of it all.
The word "slave" has a very real and very painful real-world history and baggage for a lot of people, and we should no longer be using it in our technical language.
And this is not about condemning past actions but about taking the opportunity to do better in the future. Is our profession not about continuous learning and improvement? Why should that improvement only be technical in nature?
No one is asking for carte blanche to blindly agree to any and all future changes without any thought or discussion.
But this one should be pretty obvious to anyone who stops for a minute to think about it.
Also saying that "most people don't see it as a problem" is part of the problem. That can't be the only metric. This is exactly the mentality that leads to disrespect and disenfranchisement of underrepresented parts of our community.
That people are asking for the completely racially unrelated “whitelist” and “blacklist” to be blocked shows that people are already asking for carte blanche agreements to their desires without question. They’re trying to invent racism just because they need to be outraged.
> 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?
Don't do this. You and I both know this is just an example you're pulling out to take a controversial stance and doing a disservice to the people voicing their earnest concerns. You can feel free to disagree with them, but arguing like this is just... mean-spirited.
You can't possibly be trying to argue that the OP actually does find the term "SSL" as abhorrent as some of the terms being considered, such as "master/slave", are you? That the OP legitimately feels this way and is not just pulling something out of their behind for the sake of arguing disingenuously?
God I feel like I’m on reddit with nonsense comments like theirs. It’s baffling how they can’t see why master/slave MIGHT be an issue and compare it arbitrary offenses.
"Mind you, they are still a very dangerous organized street gang with crimes ranging from Assault, Armed Robbery, & Murder. Warning: Avoid S Chandler Blvd, & anywhere from west of Cooper Rd & 8th Avenue, between S Mesa Dr at night."
This is INSANE. They have killed people. OpenSSL has blood on their hands.
If you do not stand with the people of Arizona who have been terrorized by the SSL(South Side Locos), how do I take seriously that you stand with the people who have been affected by slavery across time in history? Is this all for show then?
Why does it matter if SSL is commonly understood to reference the South Side Locos? Clearly people have been affected negatively by them. If you aren't going to stand up for them, how do we believe you really stand for black people and others who have been enslaved?
Before modern times, slave was just a common word to define people who had been put under slavery. Back then, you would've scoffed at the idea of censoring away a perfectly acceptable word because "it's not commonly understood to be offensive". That's what I gather from your refusal to recognize SSL as an offensive term referencing the Arizona street gang.
1. I'm calling out people who are making disingenuous arguments for the sake of argument ("The term SSL is a deep insult to my culture.") Are you actually upset by "SSL" referring to an Arizona street gang? If so, I'm sorry to hear that, but:
2. I, personally, put my bar at "is it a common understanding that this term widely means bad shit?" If you brought this to me, I would say: sorry, I understand, but I don't think this is widely understood to mean "South Side Locos". If this makes me terrible in your eyes, then so be it. But I don't think that's what you're angling for with this line of argument.
I am making a serious argument. How come we care less about the feelings of people when it's just some people in the state of Arizona? We will make changes to all kinds of stuff for the sake of black people, but ah, I don't care too much about these other people tho, they just have to live with it. Shouldn't we take into account everyone's feelings? The people of Arizona who live in that region know who the SSL are. Most aren't software developers.
Like I said, if you are going to stand up for one group and not for another, I find it hard to believe that you actually stand for anything. Could it be it's just the group of the day for you and it's something you can feel good about because it's the appropriate thing in the current cultural climate?
I have made absolutely zero claim that I am taking every group under the sun into account for my opinions. I have even told you the exact line I am drawing. Once again:
Does everyone know that SSL is a street gang in Arizona? No, they fucking don't.
Does everyone know that master/slave are terms relating to literal ownership of human beings? Yes, they fucking do.
Does this require a consideration of the cultural zeitgeist? No, it doesn't, because everyone knows slavery is bad.
All of this bullshit you are tacking on is literally not what I believe.
"Honestly I don't give a fuck what you believe. The fact is that it offends someone somewhere in Arizona and I will not stand for this."
This is what I would say if I were in the league of those trying to censor everything I, or anyone somewhere don't like. You cannot win against these people vore. One day they will come for something that you may hold very dear to your heart or person. And they will cry in pain as they strike you. Because you're the evil one getting in the way of their change and progressive activism.
You have basically stated that you only care about majority or widely recognised "problem words". Doesn't that now make you part of the problem that you are trying to solve by renaming terminology to something less offensive?
No, but it's rather similar to many of the worst things that have happened to humanity. It's yet another attempt to rule through fear, by making people afraid to disagree, supported by people who seek revenge instead of coexistence.
It seems reasonable to not want to associate 'black' with 'bad/evil'.
Is it? The term "black goods" is often used to refer to things like TVs, stereo systems, and HTPCs, because of what colour they often are, and that's not bad/evil at all.
...and are we going to start complaining about "dark mode" too...?
Thinking about a few terms that we use and then deciding "this term has no effect" or "this term reinforces prejudices" is not a great Sisyphean task. Not all terms that have to do with color are inherently prejudiced or exclusionary. Common sense can still reign while being honest about the etymology of our words.
This is assuming you are asking in good faith, and not to trivialize and silence people who disagree with you.
We should also change all of these doubleplus ungood words:
Black market
Black magic
Black Sabbath
Black widow
Black soul
Black sheep
Black eye
Black mark
Black rider
Black out
Black box
Black book
If someone proposing using a better term than 'blacklist' makes you take an all-or-nothing reaction, it might be a case where if you have a hammer, everything you see is a nail.
Can't you empathise with people who identify as black and have to see phrases like "black magic" meaning evil while "white magic" is good? Why not start here? Are we only changing open ssl because it's easy?
I don't question if someone gets offended because that is their right, but we can't change everything which is offensive because some things someone will always hate, no matter what. But, there is another reason to object to the term SSL, as I will mention below:
I don't like this term "SSL". It is not SSL. It is TLS.
The author of OpenSSL (or whatever other program) can change the program if they want to do; I am not objecting to that. Whether or not it is a good idea to change it is a different question, of course.
(I also don't like the term "tonne". Not due to being offensive; I don't want to complain just because I find a word offensive. But, because I think "megagram" is better, instead.)
"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...
People 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 is any indication, 4chan is about to make his life very very miserable.
Here 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?'
The 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!
The 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.
> 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 on "Replaced occurrences of master/slave terminology with leader/follower " for Django, from 6 years ago.
It 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").
I 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...
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
116 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 192 ms ] threadA 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 (The International Labour Organization estimates that, by their definitions, over 40 million people are in some form of slavery today.)
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.
Want to change the world? Do the work.
Advocacy is work, and costly.
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.
Why does someone want to show support to people who do not need that support after all?
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.
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.
I'd rather donate food to the local animal refuge than give to them.
IMHO things like this should be treated like the trolls they are; and not fed, lest important projects get overrun by this BS.
I think at large, while some changes might be more performative than others, removing master/slave terminology seems pretty clear cut.
"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
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
* 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)
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.)
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?
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.
What about new projects, are they to avoid these words too, and what would you call that?
I wish the best to all blacks, queers, trans and minorities, as all voices are unique and important. But that doesn't mean we drop principles like liberty of speech and thought. If people are hurt, that needs to be addressed, and this (token gestures) just ain't enough.
TL;DR Going PC is not going to solve the root structural problem. Feeling good about short-term, shallow fixes are overrated.
I can certainly think of other very objectionable and hurtful words that people don't want to encounter in any context.. I am sure you can think of some words too.
Why is it so hard for you to understand that this particular word falls in that category for a large number of people.
Again, it has nothing to do with context, it has to do with THE WORD ITSELF.
Removing a word from a codebase does absolutely nothing to help this. Most of the people claiming they are against slavery indirectly support it daily. Most coffee on Earth is made by unpaid forced child labour. Most chocolate production relies on the same.
I'll put forward that the vast majority of people who claim to care about the usage of the word slave don't think in the slightest about the prevalent modern existence of actual slaves or will do anything to change it at their own expense. Words are cheap, slacktivism is cheap, taking personal responsibility and actively avoiding slave products is not.
> Estimates of the number of slaves today range from around 21 million to 46 million[0]
> Approximately 2.1 million children in West Africa "still do the dangerous and physically taxing work of harvesting cocoa". The report suggested that it would be an uphill battle to improve the situation. [1]
> An undercover probe has discovered child labour at farms linked to coffee giant Nespresso.[2]
> Uighurs and other minorities aren’t just being subjected to forced re-education — they’re being used as slave labor after completing their terms of “study.”
> The ASPI estimates that up to 80,000 Uighurs have been forced into labor camps this way, some of them directly after finishing their indoctrination at Chinese re-education centers. The report includes three case studies focused on factories producing goods for Nike, Adidas/Fila, and Apple. A total of 83 companies have been identified as benefiting from these practices [5]
Hopefully one day those enjoying a chocolate latte at Starbucks wearing designer clothes made by indentured workers while posting about slavery on their iPhone will see the irony. [3][4][5]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labour_in_cocoa_producti...
[2] https://metro.co.uk/2020/02/26/nespresso-exposed-using-child...
[3] https://labs.theguardian.com/unicef-child-labour/
[4] https://www.fastcompany.com/90279693/did-a-slave-make-your-s...
[5] https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/306909-report-china-sell...
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.
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?
Most of them look like they are shades of brown to me.
Prepare yourself. I’ve read a lot of these threads lately and it’s really disappointing. The conversation instantly devolves into bullshit like that person in the GitHub issue claiming to be an orphan that’s offended by the term parent.
I think changing contribution guidelines and being more cognizant of offensive terms going forward is an obvious win. I’m not really sure what to think about API breaking changes though. Maybe a comment in the code linking to updated guidelines would be a pragmatic solution that doesn’t require breaking changes. It’s probably got to be assessed case by case.
What do you think of breaking changes?
I think it is better to apologise and acknowledge for terms that are offensive rather than erase them.
While removing offensive 70’s TV comedy shows is probably a good thing to avoid perpetuating unhealthy stereotypes, preventing the use of 19th century literature is less helpful because we should not forget history.
Wouldn't a more straightforward and sensible solution be to stop referring to people with darker skin as 'black' since, actually, they're not that colour?
And conversely 'white' skin isn't white. So let's get rid of that reference too.
I'd argue that continuing to use black / white as racial descriptions is highly offensive because it originates in the era of institutional racism and slavery. Why perpetuate that attitude?
(British cultural reference - What have the Romans ever done for us? Monty Python. - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7tvauOJMHo )
But the issue at hand here is very important and should not be made lite of.
The first time I saw documentation guidelines was while working for a large US software house in the early 90’s. This was a marketing led initiative, along with very specific instructions about correct use of trademarks the guide was prescriptive about always using female pronouns.
Three decades later we still have significant gender bias in the industry but in my experience things have improved almost beyond recognition.
In that time, attitudes to race, gender and sexuality have advanced significantly in the US and European corporations. I still come across unacceptable attitudes and language, but open sexism, racism and anti semitism is almost non existent. Sadly this is not yet true in some of the emerging market countries I’ve worked in.
The use of language may or may not have contributed to this welcome change, but what was at the time called positive discrimination, a term that in itself is possibly no longer politically correct, did definitely draw attention to an issue that was otherwise not generally discussed at work.
The conversation about pronouns has moved on too.
My somewhat longwinded preamble does have a point, the language we use can make people think about issues they would not otherwise be aware of.
I don’t know if the terms master and servant are generally considered acceptable, my guess is master/slave is predominant because it is meaningful, short and easy to spell and in itself is not racist language.
I think that at least some of the corporate avalanche of support for the current protests is no less cynical and self serving than the political correctness in marketing of the early 90’s, but it will still result in positive change.
I have a really hard time making sense of this sentiment. You're stipulating that the words have truly no ill intent whatsoever, and yet you're happy that they're being banned?
And beyond that, does this sort of thing really belong in the top ten thousand concerns of anyone, when it comes to making the world a better place?
In my country, saying the color won't hurt others (that's not offensive words). But we know when or how to say the Color will hurt them (the Color word became offensive word). (I don't know how to tell you the exact example..long story)
I'm trying to understand you.
1. Do you have any bad experience? for example, people pointed at you and say a color word hurt you. Is it very common in US?
2. If whitelist = bad; If blacklist = good
will you have the same feeling?
3. Do you really think white/black list linking to master/slave, or just try to avoid it in the future? (because the society telling you not to say that) [educated to feel bad and deep feeling from heart, I think that's different)
4. When will you feel good (or no bad feelings) when you see the word Black / White (or your color)? (I will feel confused if your answer is never)
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
A variant of PNG called PNG-16 uses the term "black magic", and it is appropriate there, because it is indeed black!
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.
> "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.”
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.
"Is it offensive enough?" is a really bad hill to die on.
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.
The word "slave" has a very real and very painful real-world history and baggage for a lot of people, and we should no longer be using it in our technical language.
And this is not about condemning past actions but about taking the opportunity to do better in the future. Is our profession not about continuous learning and improvement? Why should that improvement only be technical in nature?
No one is asking for carte blanche to blindly agree to any and all future changes without any thought or discussion.
But this one should be pretty obvious to anyone who stops for a minute to think about it.
Also saying that "most people don't see it as a problem" is part of the problem. That can't be the only metric. This is exactly the mentality that leads to disrespect and disenfranchisement of underrepresented parts of our community.
It’s not even a what if.
Stones and glass houses and all that.
Simply put: don’t be needlessly ridiculous.
If you're not being facetious, then I will edit it.
Don't do this. You and I both know this is just an example you're pulling out to take a controversial stance and doing a disservice to the people voicing their earnest concerns. You can feel free to disagree with them, but arguing like this is just... mean-spirited.
0 - https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=south%20side...
"Mind you, they are still a very dangerous organized street gang with crimes ranging from Assault, Armed Robbery, & Murder. Warning: Avoid S Chandler Blvd, & anywhere from west of Cooper Rd & 8th Avenue, between S Mesa Dr at night."
This is INSANE. They have killed people. OpenSSL has blood on their hands.
Is it a common understanding master/slave means, well, enslavement? Yes, absolutely.
Before modern times, slave was just a common word to define people who had been put under slavery. Back then, you would've scoffed at the idea of censoring away a perfectly acceptable word because "it's not commonly understood to be offensive". That's what I gather from your refusal to recognize SSL as an offensive term referencing the Arizona street gang.
1. I'm calling out people who are making disingenuous arguments for the sake of argument ("The term SSL is a deep insult to my culture.") Are you actually upset by "SSL" referring to an Arizona street gang? If so, I'm sorry to hear that, but:
2. I, personally, put my bar at "is it a common understanding that this term widely means bad shit?" If you brought this to me, I would say: sorry, I understand, but I don't think this is widely understood to mean "South Side Locos". If this makes me terrible in your eyes, then so be it. But I don't think that's what you're angling for with this line of argument.
Like I said, if you are going to stand up for one group and not for another, I find it hard to believe that you actually stand for anything. Could it be it's just the group of the day for you and it's something you can feel good about because it's the appropriate thing in the current cultural climate?
Does everyone know that SSL is a street gang in Arizona? No, they fucking don't.
Does everyone know that master/slave are terms relating to literal ownership of human beings? Yes, they fucking do.
Does this require a consideration of the cultural zeitgeist? No, it doesn't, because everyone knows slavery is bad.
All of this bullshit you are tacking on is literally not what I believe.
This is what I would say if I were in the league of those trying to censor everything I, or anyone somewhere don't like. You cannot win against these people vore. One day they will come for something that you may hold very dear to your heart or person. And they will cry in pain as they strike you. Because you're the evil one getting in the way of their change and progressive activism.
Thinking about how we use the term 'blacklist' doesn't seem like much of a sacrifice on our part.
If you disagree, I would love to hear your logic.
Is it? The term "black goods" is often used to refer to things like TVs, stereo systems, and HTPCs, because of what colour they often are, and that's not bad/evil at all.
...and are we going to start complaining about "dark mode" too...?
This is assuming you are asking in good faith, and not to trivialize and silence people who disagree with you.
I was triggered twice just typing this up.
Nor master, and whatever others terms one can come up with. I'm offended by your username, please change it.
At the end of the day it doesn't seem like it actually moves the world forward.
I don't like this term "SSL". It is not SSL. It is TLS.
The author of OpenSSL (or whatever other program) can change the program if they want to do; I am not objecting to that. Whether or not it is a good idea to change it is a different question, of course.
(I also don't like the term "tonne". Not due to being offensive; I don't want to complain just because I find a word offensive. But, because I think "megagram" is better, instead.)
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.
Better ban it just to be safe.
I feel sorry for people who do things like this, only because if https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21833377 is any indication, 4chan is about to make his life very very miserable.
"Inclusiveness includes stupidity too."
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.
This. clap Has. clap Got. clap To. clap Go!
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.
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 on "Replaced occurrences of master/slave terminology with leader/follower " for Django, from 6 years ago.
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").
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...
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/pull/12089/commits/b7d2ec...
Maybe I’m missing something?
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