For instance, if you have a disk with Windows, FreeBSD, and Linux partitions, each partition has its own boot sector that loads its own boot loader, and the MBR loads one of those. (Generally it's a tiny piece of code that could come from any of the OSes that looks at which partition is marked bootable, loads the boot sector for that partition, and execs it.)
Why yes, I do in fact believe that the people who contribute to FreeBSD (and OpenZFS and so forth) should be able to develop FreeBSD in the way they want and that we can disregard the opinions of anonymous outsiders.
Ouch, but didn't they adopt a code of conduct that they be "welcoming" and "respectful" (of other opinions)? Your belief seems to directly contradict their coc.
"When we disagree, try to understand why. Disagreements, both social and technical, happen all the time and FreeBSD is no exception. It is important that we resolve disagreements and differing views constructively. [...] Being unable to understand why someone holds a viewpoint doesn't mean that they're wrong."
Yeah, I'm sure they tell their people to be respectful of others' opinions.
"Remember that we're different. The strength of FreeBSD comes from its varied community, people from a wide range of backgrounds. Different people have different perspectives on issues. "
No, that does not say to be respectful of other's opinions. It says to resolve disagreements constructively. "When will this madness end" is not an opinion that can in any way be resolved constructively - so it merits no respect.
Here's an obvious example of why your reinterpretation doesn't match the CoC: once a disagreement is resolved and you pick some answer, should you still respect the opinion "I don't like that decision"? If it comes with some new argument as to why the decision was wrong, yes, but if it's just "I still hold my original opinion," there's nothing to be gained by respecting the original opinion. As the CoC says, "It is important that we resolve disagreements."
(I guess the question is, what does it mean to respect an opinion, exactly? Can you dismiss an opinion from further consideration while still respecting it?)
Or another example: my opinion is that the GPL is a better license than the BSD one, but if I go to FreeBSD and tell them that, I am under no impression that they're bound to respect my opinion. I imagine that they will respect me as a person and my background that's led me to that conclusion - and they'll tell me that I should contribute to a different project that is under the GPL. Most FreeBSD users and contributors I know respect Linux and the people who contribute to it. They just also see a value in having their own project that has a different set of opinions.
Who gave you the authority to judge whether a speech is an opinion? "When will this madness end?" is an opinion, that this is a madness. Simple as that.
Also, if you go to freebsd and tout about GPL, they will still respect your opinion. They won't agree with it, but that doesn't mean respect.
I certainly agree that "When will this madness end" is an opinion. I did not judge that it was not. I said that it "was not an opinion that can in any way be resolved constructively."
(I'm a little confused now in that this is the second comment of mine you've replied to where you've misinterpreted the words I used. Are you not a fluent English speaker? I'm certainly happy to phrase things in less complex ways if so.)
It would actually be great if you applied this to yourself. I do not think that calling people pedophiles and mis-gendering them is being welcoming to people.
Seems like a straightforward change, in my experience everybody uses the initials "MBR" anyway. It shouldn't really introduce a lot of confusion.
I wish we could discuss these changes rationally on this website, but I predict that this thread is going to turn into an embarrassing flamewar in about 3 minutes.
Is this in response to BLM? I also heard a couple of years ago people were trying to rename slave harddrives to something else too (maybe "secondary"?).
Yeah, "primary"/"secondary" is common. For hard drives "master"/"slave" isn't even an accurate metaphor, since both are driven by the host computer, it's only that the secondary is physically wired to the primary and can't use the communications channel when the primary is in operation. The primary doesn't send commands to the secondary or anything.
See also this comment I wrote a couple days ago re ZFS avoiding the use of "slave" (which was used in a different sense from "slave" hard drives, and both of which are different senses from the "master" boot record): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23521392
In general I think it's good that people are picking more meaningful terms.
Master/slave is a model of asymmetric communication or control where one device or process controls one or more other devices or processes and serves as their communication hub. From wikipedia. Primary/secondary does not accurately depict the meaning.
> Master/slave is a model of asymmetric communication or control where one device or process controls one or more other devices or processes and serves as their communication hub.
Exactly. That's why it's a bad choice of name for IDE controllers and for the main boot record, where the master does not control the slave.
> inb4 we can sacrifice accuracy over feeling
Firmly agree that we should not sacrifice accuracy over feeling. I have no sympathy for people whose feelings are hurt because they're told that "master"/"slave" terminology is inaccurate. Facts don't care about your feelings.
Actually it makes sense because the slave always ask the master whether they're currently communicating with the controller. Master boot record also, because the program from the record controls the boot process of associated partitions.
Oh, sorry, you're right - when a slave wants to go talk to someone, he can do so at any time as long as the master isn't currently talking to someone. And the slave gets no orders from the master, both the master and the slave get orders from someone else.
And yes, the master makes no decisions on his own, the master simply sees which of the slaves has indicated that he wishes to be passed control, and then the master passes all control onto that slave and leaves.
I completely forgot what slavery means. I thought that slavery meant that masters controlled the slaves and the slaves didn't have freedom. Thanks for correcting my misunderstanding.
I'm glad you got it. Because the behavior is similar to slavery in humanity, it's named that. You're not saying we should eliminate slavery-like behavior in computing, right?
Ask that same question again after we have self-aware machines/software.
Inherent in the negative concept of slavery is the removal or limitation of self-determination. If the components don't have free will, this isn't an imposition.
However, in the larger context, there are very much thinking, feeling entities that are negatively impacted by the use of this terminology.
In contrast, it costs next to nothing to update the terminology to use similar terms that don't cause psychological harm to a significant portion of the populace.
Would you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN? You do it often enough that I wince when I see your username in threads like this, even though you're generally a good HN contributor.
Comments like this do not help, regardless of how right you are on the underlying issues.
The good news is that the downvotes aren't necessarily representative of the industry, in the sense of people who actually get things done. You'll notice that this change (see also the bit about being sponsored by Mellanox), the recent OpenZFS change, etc. were all made by core contributors to the projects. (It's also why the Contributor Covenant was fairly rapidly adopted by the actual contributors to so many projects, despite so many people being angry about it.)
But yes, the open source fandom is distressingly racist.
Unfortunately, I can't understand why people who downvote and don't agree with you are considered racist. They just have different opinion and they probably affected by the rename in the same way as someone may be affected by word "Master" for example.
I don't think it's exactly racism in many of these cases, so much as a lack of empathy. If you're not personally affected by these terms, and you're not able to empathize with those that are, I can see why, without being overtly racist against any particular group of people, you could be against these changes.
Our inability to empathize, or "put ourselves in someone else's shoes" is at the root of so many of our problems...
No, it has nothing to do with race. It has to do with introducing politics, racism, and your personal social commentary into a field or topic area in which that has no relevance, and in which everyone is getting along just fine.
It's looking at hard drives and calling everyone who has used terminology you think might offend someone racist through passive voice.
Paint with broad strokes, and you should not be surprised to get blowback. Walk in and start calling everyone around you closet racists without any real justification other than word choice, and to be frank, you should be thankful you don't get a worse response than you do.
The first I heard about it 17 years ago, in news articles about "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." - https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/masterslave/ .
This is absolute craziness, especially when far more offensive terms are used throughout (the devil logo, demons, gimp, git, execute, terminal, disabled).
"The gimp executable" is far far more off-sounding then "master boot record."
On the other hand it's also a good example why Linux will be never a thing on desktop. So many resources divided between developers instead of working together and focusing on one thing. But that's also the case with the millions of different desktop environments and package managers and such etc. Sometimes less is more
You miss the point. This isn't about offensive language. This is about language that conveys exclusion of marginalized groups. To view this as a case of people being offended does a disservice to the overall social issues these groups deal with.
You seem to be saying that master boot record "conveys exclusion of marginalized groups" but gimp (an offensive term for someone who is physically disabled) does not. I don't initially come to the same conclusion as you on this. Would you be willing to talk me through your thought process?
You gave multiple examples many of which were not about marginalized groups. It's clear that your problem was offense and not marginalized groups. Thus my comment.
Gimp is also not used in the context of someone who is disabled while master is used in the context of something which is in control. But personally I do feel gimp should be renamed as well.
Who was negatively impacted by the term "master boot record" before? Can you point to even one tweet or blog post before a month ago where someone said that it bothered them and made them feel excluded?
As a christian with a knee injury, I'm deeply offended by their devil logo and gimp program name. As this seems to be a clear violation of their code of conduct, I will officially raise this issue to their code of conduct committee. Let's see how they respond.
Several years ago they moved from a cartoony demon logo to a more abstract red-sphere-with-two-cones logo precisely to avoid the overtones of the old image. As a fellow Christian, I figured I'd give you the heads up so that you're not lying.
I do agree with you about the name "gimp" and I hope you raise it - it should also be changed.
There’s no reason it should be changed. Feel free to name your own projects whatever you like, but don’t impose your tyranny on other people as if it’s the only way to be a healthy and respectful person.
As a former Christian (you should capitalize that) who was raised in religious schools, pictures of the devil and the word "demon" aren't offensive.
"Devils are one of the most common mascots throughout American sports. This can likely be attributed to Christian beliefs being the most common of religions in the U.S."[1]
If anyone should be offended it's the Church of Satan, but they don't mind.
Are you the person who says who can and who cannot feel offended?
I can assert that pictures of the devil are offensive for Christians from Brazil (let's say we're about 150 millions). Unless you meant that only Christians from US should be considered.
As a fellow Brazilian who was not only brought up in a Christian family but have lived most of my life amongst a majority Christian population, I question that since I've never seen anyone being offended by pictures of the devil.
Unless you mean that only Christians from your part of Brazil should be considered.
Hmm, that's strange. I was born and raised by a very conservative Catholic family in Piracicaba/SP -> Juazeiro do Norte/CE -> Piracicaba/SP. I used to be a rocker weirdo that was often scolded by the local community due to my shirts. Catechism classes were a disaster, even that devil woman silhouette with a pointing tail was criticized.
Anyway, even if my experience is actually an exception and even if those conservative Christian people are minorities, would it be ok to offend them?
I mean, I absolutely don't care. But, now that we're revisiting everything to be as political correct as possible, couldn't we change a picture - that is offensive to a minority - to something else?
> I can assert that pictures of the devil are offensive for Christians from Brazil…
I'd find that surprising. Images of the devil have been a mainstay of Christian art for centuries (e.g. "The Temptation of Christ by the Devil"). The devil is also the mascot of two Brazilian football teams.
> Images of the devil have been a mainstay of Christian art for centuries
You're correct, but you don't see those arts in common churches and houses here. In the place that I live, demons are usually represented by a goat because they don't like the two horned guy at all.
> devil is also the mascot of two Brazilian football teams
That's interesting, maybe it's a newer team. The Brazilian classic mascots are usually either animals or humans.
How far do you want to take this? Device Drivers? Documentation? Books? Computer Science Literature?, Research Papers?
I am still waiting for someone to tell Mr Linus Torvalds or Mr Greg Kroah-Hartman to make the logical case to rename all 'offensive' words and terminology in the Linux Kernel. The same also goes for OpenBSD, if anyone else has the courage to do so in their mailing lists.
Even after we create breaking changes to software using those terms, those that are 'offended' might as well not bother reading old computer science books or research papers and force the authors to release another edition.
>Please revert. Another part if the guidance was that industry standard terms should be used until the industry renames them. This makes FreeBSD unique for no good reason.
So as far as I understand Hans (the author) is FreeBSD maintainer and he made the change in the source code. Community isn't happy about it (based on the email thread).
Is there any person who can actually revert the change ignoring Hans? How does it work in FreeBSD?
I'm quite unhappy with such changes. There are terms I used to and I never thought about those terms in any way bad meaning. Are people who rename Master to Main latent racist? Why, by reading "Master", they think about slavery?
It would be much better if we vote for such changes. Maybe give voice only to people who potentially may be offended by such words. Hans doesn't look as a person who can be offended by word Master though...
Europeans LOVE to dictate what other people must do, pointing fingers and change everything to make them feel better about themselves.
I'm from Brazil, ex-colony of Portugal, and studied that in History for almost a decade. It's funny when I read their newspaper explaining what brazilians must do with our forests. They don't lose that metropolitan mind.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 139 ms ] threadFor instance, if you have a disk with Windows, FreeBSD, and Linux partitions, each partition has its own boot sector that loads its own boot loader, and the MBR loads one of those. (Generally it's a tiny piece of code that could come from any of the OSes that looks at which partition is marked bootable, loads the boot sector for that partition, and execs it.)
Yeah, I'm sure they tell their people to be respectful of others' opinions.
"Remember that we're different. The strength of FreeBSD comes from its varied community, people from a wide range of backgrounds. Different people have different perspectives on issues. "
And welcoming too.
Here's an obvious example of why your reinterpretation doesn't match the CoC: once a disagreement is resolved and you pick some answer, should you still respect the opinion "I don't like that decision"? If it comes with some new argument as to why the decision was wrong, yes, but if it's just "I still hold my original opinion," there's nothing to be gained by respecting the original opinion. As the CoC says, "It is important that we resolve disagreements."
(I guess the question is, what does it mean to respect an opinion, exactly? Can you dismiss an opinion from further consideration while still respecting it?)
Or another example: my opinion is that the GPL is a better license than the BSD one, but if I go to FreeBSD and tell them that, I am under no impression that they're bound to respect my opinion. I imagine that they will respect me as a person and my background that's led me to that conclusion - and they'll tell me that I should contribute to a different project that is under the GPL. Most FreeBSD users and contributors I know respect Linux and the people who contribute to it. They just also see a value in having their own project that has a different set of opinions.
Also, if you go to freebsd and tout about GPL, they will still respect your opinion. They won't agree with it, but that doesn't mean respect.
(I'm a little confused now in that this is the second comment of mine you've replied to where you've misinterpreted the words I used. Are you not a fluent English speaker? I'm certainly happy to phrase things in less complex ways if so.)
I wish we could discuss these changes rationally on this website, but I predict that this thread is going to turn into an embarrassing flamewar in about 3 minutes.
See also this comment I wrote a couple days ago re ZFS avoiding the use of "slave" (which was used in a different sense from "slave" hard drives, and both of which are different senses from the "master" boot record): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23521392
In general I think it's good that people are picking more meaningful terms.
>inb4 we can sacrifice accuracy over feeling
You're welcome.
Exactly. That's why it's a bad choice of name for IDE controllers and for the main boot record, where the master does not control the slave.
> inb4 we can sacrifice accuracy over feeling
Firmly agree that we should not sacrifice accuracy over feeling. I have no sympathy for people whose feelings are hurt because they're told that "master"/"slave" terminology is inaccurate. Facts don't care about your feelings.
And yes, the master makes no decisions on his own, the master simply sees which of the slaves has indicated that he wishes to be passed control, and then the master passes all control onto that slave and leaves.
I completely forgot what slavery means. I thought that slavery meant that masters controlled the slaves and the slaves didn't have freedom. Thanks for correcting my misunderstanding.
Inherent in the negative concept of slavery is the removal or limitation of self-determination. If the components don't have free will, this isn't an imposition.
However, in the larger context, there are very much thinking, feeling entities that are negatively impacted by the use of this terminology.
In contrast, it costs next to nothing to update the terminology to use similar terms that don't cause psychological harm to a significant portion of the populace.
Comments like this do not help, regardless of how right you are on the underlying issues.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Frankly, if it makes this field and career path more welcoming to people I am absolutely fine with it.
But yes, the open source fandom is distressingly racist.
Our inability to empathize, or "put ourselves in someone else's shoes" is at the root of so many of our problems...
It's looking at hard drives and calling everyone who has used terminology you think might offend someone racist through passive voice.
Paint with broad strokes, and you should not be surprised to get blowback. Walk in and start calling everyone around you closet racists without any real justification other than word choice, and to be frank, you should be thankful you don't get a worse response than you do.
Keep your "woke" attitude outside of IT please
Projects started changing terminology at least 6 years ago, like Django at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7801646 .
"The gimp executable" is far far more off-sounding then "master boot record."
Gimp is also not used in the context of someone who is disabled while master is used in the context of something which is in control. But personally I do feel gimp should be renamed as well.
The terms master and slave are dictionary terms, and their usage is generally a similar meaning to the historical acts at the root of the issue.
EDIT: https://youtu.be/4XpnKHJAok8
I didn’t watch through it again to confirm, but if my memory isn’t failing me, it was this talk where he mentioned his naming strategy.
Personally I don’t care either way. But if it impacts someone negatively then why not do the decent thing and change it? It’s such an easy fix.
I really miss Jon Stewart
I do agree with you about the name "gimp" and I hope you raise it - it should also be changed.
"Devils are one of the most common mascots throughout American sports. This can likely be attributed to Christian beliefs being the most common of religions in the U.S."[1]
If anyone should be offended it's the Church of Satan, but they don't mind.
As for "gimp", you're right. Use Glipse. https://glimpse-editor.github.io/
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_symbolism_in_U.S._sp...
Are you the person who says who can and who cannot feel offended?
I can assert that pictures of the devil are offensive for Christians from Brazil (let's say we're about 150 millions). Unless you meant that only Christians from US should be considered.
Unless you mean that only Christians from your part of Brazil should be considered.
Anyway, even if my experience is actually an exception and even if those conservative Christian people are minorities, would it be ok to offend them?
I mean, I absolutely don't care. But, now that we're revisiting everything to be as political correct as possible, couldn't we change a picture - that is offensive to a minority - to something else?
I'd find that surprising. Images of the devil have been a mainstay of Christian art for centuries (e.g. "The Temptation of Christ by the Devil"). The devil is also the mascot of two Brazilian football teams.
You're correct, but you don't see those arts in common churches and houses here. In the place that I live, demons are usually represented by a goat because they don't like the two horned guy at all.
> devil is also the mascot of two Brazilian football teams
That's interesting, maybe it's a newer team. The Brazilian classic mascots are usually either animals or humans.
I am still waiting for someone to tell Mr Linus Torvalds or Mr Greg Kroah-Hartman to make the logical case to rename all 'offensive' words and terminology in the Linux Kernel. The same also goes for OpenBSD, if anyone else has the courage to do so in their mailing lists.
Even after we create breaking changes to software using those terms, those that are 'offended' might as well not bother reading old computer science books or research papers and force the authors to release another edition.
We cannot attain Justice while still using the same language, and indeed, alphabet.
But as long as this is a technical forum, have we reconsidered numbers? Haven't 0 and 1 and the rest of mathematical thinking been dominated by men?
>Please revert. Another part if the guidance was that industry standard terms should be used until the industry renames them. This makes FreeBSD unique for no good reason.
Good point!
https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-ha...
Is there any person who can actually revert the change ignoring Hans? How does it work in FreeBSD?
I'm quite unhappy with such changes. There are terms I used to and I never thought about those terms in any way bad meaning. Are people who rename Master to Main latent racist? Why, by reading "Master", they think about slavery?
It would be much better if we vote for such changes. Maybe give voice only to people who potentially may be offended by such words. Hans doesn't look as a person who can be offended by word Master though...
Very sad tendency is happening.
I'm from Brazil, ex-colony of Portugal, and studied that in History for almost a decade. It's funny when I read their newspaper explaining what brazilians must do with our forests. They don't lose that metropolitan mind.
Unfortunately by trying to not offend some people such changes offend others. Such changes are controversial and hence should be voted for.
Because this is how I feel when reading "Europeans LOVE to..."
Now we're the puritans, demanding not to be offended.