
Rename "master/slave" terminology to "client/server" (2008) - rmoriz
https://drupal.org/node/343414
======
eitland
Quoted from the discussion:

    
    
        Posted by dman on December 9, 2008 at 7:00am
    
      Hm.
      First convince all hardware manufacturers and retailers to
      stop labelling their cords and sockets by the grossly un-PC
      terms "Male" and "Female".
      Then get photographers and graphic artists to remove the
      clearly racist words "Black" and "White" from their
      vocabulary.
      Next we can get backup, archive and filesystem listings to
      stop using the horribly discriminatory ageist terms "older"
      and "newer".
    
      Then, maybe, we can come up with a new pair of words that
      signifies "the one that gives orders" and "the one that
      does what it's told". Or maybe in new-speak it should be
      "committee enabler" and "co-operator". :-/

~~~
judk
This is why IT people have a bad reputation in the world of socially adjusted
adults.

BTW "master/slave" words don't even make sense for databases. They are
"authoritative / possibiy-stale-replica". In many setups, the master doesn't
care if the slave exists-- this is an important feature to protect the master
if the slave fails, avoiding "many points of failure"

In IDE cables (remember that case, from Oakland CA a few years back?)
master/slave means something different again (but I don't remember how IDE
works -- it was something like primary/secondary,though, not one controlling
the other)

~~~
Houshalter
>This is why IT people have a bad reputation in the world of socially adjusted
adults.

No, it's not. This isn't true, it's not even an argument for why the
terminology should be changed.

------
guard-of-terra
Master/slave usually means very different distinction than client/server.

With databases, both master and slaves are servers.

IT community is much wider than the USA and doesn't care much about quirks of
history of USA as a basis for confusing things up.

~~~
jasonlotito
> quirks of history of USA

Sorry, I don't get how the history of the USA applies in this context?

~~~
judk
USAans believe that we have the strongest history of (a) racial-based slavery
systems (b) whose victim's descendants are still here to be concerned about,
(c) recently enough to still feel relevant (not ancient Rome)

What are other examples that match?

~~~
jasonlotito
> What are other examples that match?

The existing slavery that still goes on all across the world today? Slavery
isn't limited to just the history of the US.

In fact, the article makes this exact point, and as the reason for the issue.

So when someone says:

"IT community is much wider than the USA and doesn't care much about quirks of
history of USA as a basis for confusing things up."

they clearly didn't read the article and is ignorant of the issue being
discussed.

------
omeid2
False dichotomy.

Master/Slave is not exactly same as Master/Client.

You can have a Master Unit with replicating or horizontally scaling Slaves and
often the very same Master Unit is also a Server to one or multiple type of
Clients. (NFS is a good example.)

I think it is a pretty similar case to racism, if you want to stop it, "stop
talking about it."

------
davidy123
I find no problem in being politically correct, and it presents a good
opportunity to adopt more precise terms since technical language full of
anachronisms is clubby and corny. It is all part of making our realm more
widely suitable.

"Primary" and "secondary" or "coordinator" and "processor" may be more
descriptive.

~~~
spydum
Yup, projects like openldap switched to provider/consumer, which does more
accurately describe the arrangement.

~~~
ealloc
"head" and "worker" is also used in some contexts.

------
qwerta
[irony] If we try not to offend anyone, we should ban word 'slave' completely
[/irony]

The word 'slave' is garbled version of 'slav' or 'slovo'; an ethnic group
enslaved by Byzantine empire.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slav#Ethnonym](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slav#Ethnonym)

------
gizmo
PC issues never look like a "big deal" to most of us. Changing terminology is
a "hassle" and why can't people just "get over it?" Aren't there bigger things
to worry about? Political correctness is just another form of oppression!

That's essentially how every discussion goes. But this is of course because
we're mostly highly educated white males from the richest parts of the world,
and it's hard to emphasize with something you don't directly relate to. We
don't face much (if any) oppression so things that may not look like a big
deal to us can be a big deal to other people.

Master/Slave may one day turn into completely neutral words but today for many
people they're not. We don't lose anything by switching to less objectionable
terminology -- the right to refer to things as slaves is not a right I mind
losing -- so why not make the switch?

~~~
teddyh
> the right to refer to things as slaves is not a right I mind losing

Actually, I see this as an opportunity to _change_ the word “slave” to always
refer to a _thing_ , not a person.

~~~
RivieraKid
Why would you do that and how would you call a slave person then?

~~~
colanderman
The Czech don't seem to have a problem with the word robot:
[http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/robota](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/robota)

------
Artemis2
Stupid polemics about technical terms. That's getting annoying.

------
nsxwolf
There's nothing immoral about two pieces of software being a master and a
slave. Quit with this nonsense already.

Personally I'd rather get rid of the male/female designation for connectors.
Ever get asked about it by a little kid? "Well, it's like this cable is
fucking this interface! See?"

------
nasmorn
Server comes from servus which is the latin word for slave so I cant see the
improvement.

------
teddyh
Interestingly, DNS has gone the _other_ way. It used to be that it was called
“primary” and “secondary” DNS servers, but now the preferred terms are
“master” and “slave” servers.

~~~
dec0dedab0de
Primary and secondary are from the clients perspective. Master and slave has
to do with zones. A slave zone is essentially blank and gets all its records
from a master zone.

~~~
teddyh
If you look at the old RFCs, you can see that the words were used differently
before the change to the current usage.

------
_cipher_
While we're at it, remove FreeBSD logo, no BLACK chocolate and the world will
become a better place.

Oh, and please remove linux kernel, because I'm getting results with `grep
"fuck"`.

Sometimes I feel offended with the people who feel offended. ;)

------
rakoo
What if, in the future, "master" and "slave" would refer first to the current
computer terms, and then only, after much thought, to the old practice we know
? Couldn't we change the first intended meaning of those words that best
describes the relationship, without implying anything toward actual human
slavery ?

Similarly, as a non-American, when I hear/see the word _nigga_ , it's always
used as a word to show respect towards someone else [0], _never_ to diminish
the other person. I actually find that word nice-sounding, and I wouldn't want
to stop using it because in some contexts it used to mean something else.

For the original issue, if _master /slave_ is an issue, I don't think we could
ever find any politically corect replacement words that equally describe one
entity that governs and other entities that listen and obey without asking
questions.

[0] [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/denzel-mah-
nigga](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/denzel-mah-nigga)

~~~
Larrikin
I find that only pretty much any time I see that word on the internet it's
never in this respect context. I grew up hearing it all the time and didn't
realize it was a big deal until I realized the vast majority of the time it is
still used in a negative context no matter what the spelling.

------
weddpros
We prefer master and slave COMPUTERS than master and slave humans. Isn't it
what counts most?

~~~
rmoriz
The terms "master" and "slave" come from human slavery. You can't deny the
roots of this terminolgy.

~~~
rjknight
"Robot" is etymologically derived from a Slavic word for slave ("Rab" in
Russian, apparently).

The existence of robots is not problematic. Treating a human as a robot most
definitely is. The existence of slaves, in the sense of things entirely
controlled by other things, is not a problem, but treating a human as a slave
is a problem (outside of consensual BDSM practices[1], I guess).

Words change in meaning constantly. Whilst I can see the appeal of linguistic
conservatism, the facts of life in this matter really are not conservative.
The use of "slave" to refer to devices that are controlled by other devices is
only a little over a century old, so it's still quite a new coinage, but words
can often change meaning on even shorter timescales. Quite a number of words
in common usage today derive from words with different meanings and, over
time, these origins tend to either be forgotten or come to be disassociated
from the derived word such that we no longer perceive them as the same.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominance_and_submission_(BDSM)...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominance_and_submission_\(BDSM\)#Some_linguistic_conventions)

~~~
derleth
> "Robot" is etymologically derived from a Slavic word for slave ("Rab" in
> Russian, apparently).

More immediately, it's Czech for 'worker': Karel Čapek, the person who coined
the word as it's now used in English for his play _R.U.R._ (Rossum's Universal
Robots), was Czech.

Karel Čapek:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karel_%C4%8Capek](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karel_%C4%8Capek)

 _R.U.R._ :
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R).

~~~
H4wk_cz
Robot isn't czech for worker. It is derived from czech robota:
[http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/robota](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/robota)

------
zwily
I try to always use primary/[secondary,replica]. It's still difficult, for
some reason.

Client/server just makes no sense though.

------
dlitz
The master/slave analogy isn't comparable. The terms "master" and "slave"
refer to the relationships between technical components of the system, not to
people.

Every time inclusive language comes up, there are people who sound off about
the absurdity of trying to avoid offending everyone. Yes, offending people on
the Internet is fine, and probably unavoidable. That's not the issue.

Large parts of our society _still_ routinely get excluded from many things, as
a matter of course, for no reason except that it's been the status quo for a
long time. Deliberately using inclusive language is a way to broadcast a
conscious decision: "We are willing to make at least trivial efforts to break
that trend in our group."

This is about not making people feel excluded for reasons that are completely
beyond their control, particularly when they're routinely so excluded
elsewhere in society.

------
RexRollman
PC crap.

