
ZFS Removes References to Slavery - turrini
https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/pull/10435
======
Ghjklov
Nothing to see here except devs covering their asses from accusations. As a
PoC, I recognize that actions like this do nothing to change the system and
they are really just diversions from actually putting in effort to make a real
impact.

~~~
dehrmann
(non-rhetorically) I wonder if actions like this are more harmful or
beneficial. On one hand, they raise awareness, but on the other, they're just
token gestures, and they might cause debate that'd be better spent on
something for meaningful.

~~~
Ghjklov
It's the kind of token gesture that actually just makes people more skeptical
or angry at PoC who most of the time had nothing to do with the gesture.

~~~
ashtonkem
I doubt that’s specific to these kinds of efforts; it seems that any advance
for PoC in America draws a significant backlash, whether or not the advance
was substantive or symbolic.

------
rvz
Is Linux going to be next?

Let's ask Mr Torvalds nicely to remove all master / slave references in the
Linux kernel because it is 'offensive'. /s

I don't think such a request is practical given the kLOCs of those references
which will break other software.

~~~
ashtonkem
My general take has been that we should probably avoid these terms moving
forward, but that the technical cost of going through nearly a century’s worth
of technical stack and fixing every last reference is probably a pretty
technically risky operation.

~~~
xupybd
Technically risky yes but worth it. Inconsistencies in naming make code
horrible to work with.

~~~
mikecoles
Perfect reason to leave the terminology as it is.

------
Hamuko
Meanwhile searching for the term "kill" returns 75 code results in
openzfs/zfs.

~~~
quasarj
Well, there's nothing discriminatory about killing. We kill everyone
eventually!

~~~
deogeo
Slavery is not exclusive to black people either.

~~~
soganess
Your right, it's insensitive to every people group that's been enslaved for
any period of time. Yet somehow that doesn't encompass all people groups in
the same way that kill does. Maybe we should be considerate of all
peoples/individuals who have experienced slavery directly or in their
ancestry.

My Swiftian Proposal: lets just remain all uses of the word "slave" to
"forcedChildLaborer". It's more accurate anyway, since in software a "slave"
is usually "born" into the role and often times doesn't live very long. We are
striving for accuracy after all, right?

And for my two cents that will inflame this even more: We should considering
deprecating the use of "kill" to signify terminate. I haven't used it in my
15+ years of writing software professionally and no one has impugned my code
quality for not using "kill" enough.

------
xupybd
I don't know if deps is the best replacement. Ignoring the politics for a
moment, iff this is going to be done across the board I think a naming
convention needs to be well thought out and developed to replace these terms.
We will no doubt be left with the resulting terms for a very long time.
Intuitive and descriptive names go a long way to lowering the mental overhead
of working with code.

~~~
PBnFlash
This I think is the key issue, replacing a clear label with half a dozen
almost synonyms is the dangerous part of this precedent.

------
akerro
Can these project changing words at least agree on a single word to use? We're
going to have 10s of different words representing the same thing that for
decades of evolving technology was known as slave. It will make it confusing
and difficult to move between technologies.

~~~
geofft
That's the funny thing - in almost all contexts I've seen the "master/slave"
terminology, it's not actually technically clear.

In some contexts (e.g. Jenkins), a "master" tells the "slave" what to do and
the "slave" does it. This at least is plausibly connected to the real-world
meanings of the term, although given that the "slave" can start and stop work
at any time and the "master" needs to accommodate that, the analogy isn't
great. "Coordinator/worker" works well here.

In some contexts (e.g., MySQL), a "master" sends a copy of all its work to the
"slave," and both of them execute it. The "slave" stands ready to replace the
"master" if the "master" becomes unavailable, and usually at that point the
"master" becomes the new "slave" once it catches up. This makes no sense.
"Primary/replica" works well here.

In some contexts (e.g., network device bonding, and, I think, ZFS), a "master"
is a logical construct, consisting of multiple physical "slaves". All
interactions with the "master" are actually algorithmically sent to one or
more "slaves," and if all the "slaves" are offline, there's no "master" left.
This, also, makes no sense. Terms that would make sense include things like
"bond device/bonded member" (the members being bonded _to each other_ ),
"logical volume/physical volume", etc. In this pull request they seem to use
"dependency."

In some contexts (e.g. disk drives), the "master" and "slave" are both devices
that provide the same type of service to the host, but the "slave" connects to
the "master" instead of directly to the host, and while the "master" is
communicating, the "slave" can't. This, also, makes no sense.
"Primary/secondary" works well here.

In pseudoterminals, the "master" is a limited API to the PTY object, held by
the terminal emulator, which copies text to the screen, interpreters rendering
commands, and sends input. The "slave" is a more featureful API to the same
PTY object, held by the shell / the command under execution, which does what
it wants. This, also, makes no sense. I don't know of a standard term here,
but I'd sort of suggest "monitor" and "application" (or perhaps "monitor" and
"session" if you want to keep the initials).

All of these are different uses, and you can't generally map one to another.
For instance, if you're used to a database where "master/slave" is used in the
primary/replica sense, and you see a database where the "master" just
coordinates requests for work and all actual data is sent to/from some
"slave," your knowledge of primary/replica architecture is misleading here.

~~~
MauranKilom
> [Jenkins] "Coordinator/worker" works well here.

Agreed, although my mind immediately went to "manager" and how that is one of
the most useless names. See e.g.
[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1866794](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1866794).
Need to be careful with this type of naming.

> [MySQL] "Primary/replica" works well here.

Agreed.

> [ZFS] Terms that would make sense include things like "bond device/bonded
> member" (the members being bonded to each other), "logical volume/physical
> volume", etc. In this pull request they seem to use "dependency."

These names more than double number of syllables/characters, which will
severely hamper adoption. I find "dependency" to be a bad descriptor for
individual components fully making up a whole, but I expect that the ZFS
people deliberated over that name and that my extremely limited familiarity
with the topic(s) is the reason why I find "dependency" weird.

> [disk drives] "Primary/secondary" works well here.

Agreed.

> [pseudoterminals] I don't know of a standard term here, but I'd sort of
> suggest "monitor" and "application" (or perhaps "monitor" and "session" if
> you want to keep the initials).

I would strongly discourage overloading the meaning of "monitor" in the
context of terminals. Otherwise, you all but guarantee confusion.

~~~
geofft
For bonding devices I usually say "bond" and "member" at work, or things like
"I added eth4 to bond0," which seems at least as clear as "I enslaved eth4 to
bond0". For disks I usually write and say "LV" and "PV" for LVM and "LD" and
"PD" for MegaRAID, which matches what the respective CLIs use.

Re terminals, it's the end that's connected to the monitor (or terminal
emulator), just like the other end is connected to the application/session.
There aren't two actual pseudoterminals in any sense, just two views of the
same thing, so the idea of "the pty master"/"the pty slave" doesn't quite make
sense unless you're _very_ careful to realize you're talking about the open FD
and not the actual thing. I'd probably say something like "the monitor end"
and "the session end" (and continue to abbreviate them as "ptm"/"pts").

------
Artur96
1984 is slowly becoming a reality. Great work comrades!

~~~
geofft
What part of it specifically?

~~~
pacala
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak)

~~~
geofft
Newspeak removes terms from language so that certain ideas cannot be
expressed.

This pull request does concern language, yes. But it retains the use of the
term "slave" in existing APIs, while updating a script that is named "slaves"
to use the term "deps," a term that is already used elsewhere in the API. At
the end of the pull request, both terms remain meaningful. Furthermore, no
attempt is made to hide previous use of the term - or to prevent using the
term "slave" to refer to human slavery.

So I'm not sure I see the comparison.

~~~
pacala
The title right now: 'ZFS Removes References to Slavery'. Probably 95% of the
commenters have not read TFA in sufficient detail to argue minutiae details.
They see 'language changed in support of the dominant political current' and
link it to Newspeak because that's the only frame of reference most people are
aware of. It's not like it's an isolated incident, there is plenty of language
redefinition, history rewriting and statues toppling as we speak.

~~~
geofft
> _Probably 95% of the commenters have not read TFA in sufficient detail to
> argue minutiae details. They see 'language changed in support of the
> dominant political current' and link it to Newspeak_

That might be the first Orwellian thing in this thread - people see a thing
they've been told is bad and done by bad people and they need to get their Two
Minutes Hate out, and they don't have the intellectual curiosity to spend
those two minutes figuring out what's actually happening. (Actually, maybe
there's a bit of _Brave New World_ in there too.)

> _there is plenty of language redefinition, history rewriting and statues
> toppling as we speak._

Give me specific examples, and we can talk about whether this is _1984_ or
not.

(I'm aware of some statues being toppled over the last couple of weeks that
were originally put in place _by people who wanted to rewrite history_ \- and
the act of toppling those statues has caused much more public discussion about
the subjects of their statues and their true history than the statues
themselves ever did. That hardly seems like _1984_ to me. I'm not sure what
you mean by language redefinition and history rewriting, otherwise.)

------
totetsu
Since this is already flagged, and only RSS power users will see this now, I
will risk a negative comment. Sometimes HN seems like a great community of the
the mind, a bastion from the flame storm that is the general conversation on
the internet.. But sometimes you catch a glimpse of all that even here.. Not
to disregard those who were trying to have good faith discussions here. I just
feel sometimes like nowhere is beyond manipulation anymore..

------
speedgoose
I think this is a good thing. I'm not a fan of removing the master name,
because master has more meanings than in the slavery context and its other
meanings fit well the metaphor of master in IT. But they have not removed the
master term. Only the slave term, which can go away. I will not miss it, it
always felt weird to use this metaphor.

~~~
banads
Why should we ban the word "slave"; aren't there more people living in slavery
now, than ever before in history? Seems like if anything we should be raising
awareness about that, not hiding it literally.

~~~
speedgoose
It's not about banning the word slave, we need this word, but the term slave
in IT that is not necessary.

~~~
banads
Then why are IT professionals so eager to hide that word from themselves, when
there are more people living in slavery now than ever before?

------
freemint
The Julia community also does not use slave and actively encourages the use of
that term in community chat. I am not sure how i feel about that. I am not
made uncomfortable by that term but i can't judge whether others might be. So
i can only ask, what does that term do for me? Nothing but i guess i can
convince my brain to think "worker" instead "slave".

------
ksaj
I don't know if it counts, but I've noticed the use of Top Chef instead of
Master Chef more and more often these days.

On the other hand, you have "old masters" referring to great historical
artists or colloquially, their artwork, "Masters" referring to golf
tournaments, "mastery" when you get better at something over time, etc. None
of these connect to a slave concept.

The word slave, on the other hand, is more problematic since it doesn't have
those other contexts, and always means some sort of subservience. We already
went through this exact exercise back when multiple hard drives were referred
to as a single master and however many slaves. We still call it a Master Boot
Record, but any other boot sectors don't get called slaves anymore.

Primary is a perfectly fine word that we're already using in this context
nowadays. I'd be perfectly happy if we didn't have a dozen names for the same
things. Everything else is secondary.

------
baron816
Yeah, get rid of “slave”. The “master” thing I think is easy to remove too, so
might as well, but I don’t think it’s nearly as bad. Think of all the things
that are way more closely associated with “master”: MasterClass, masterpiece,
Jedi Master, master craftsman, mastery, etc. I don’t think it’s necessary to
get rid of all those terms.

------
forgot_user1234
What do Indians think about this topic?

P.S. - Indians were taken slaves to Africa, west indies etc. etc.

my opinion - I don't give a flying hoot. There's no way I am changing my
codebase for this BS.

------
mrbonner
I created an automated tool to deploy and provision Hadoop YARN cluster at
work. I’m so glad that I named the non-master hosts “core” nodes instead of
slave node :) or I would have to change the naming convention now. I still
have the “master” node though.

~~~
vorticalbox
In this sense master and slave is the correct term.

You have a master with unidirectional control over the slaves.

Just like in IDE drivers of old.

------
yread
Why haven't the prehistoric computer people choose something else. I like
'master' and 'puppet'. Totally non-offensive and very close to the metal

~~~
takeda
I think a better is master-follower if they really must.

But this is silly, I totally understand for PostgreSQL change from master-
slave to master-standby. Standby is actually much better word to describe
node's function.

The change for the sake of word being offensive is just plain stupid. The use
of it did not really encourage slavery based on race. So it feels less about
offending then being reminded about horrible American's history.

If they want to go all PC, what about use of word "kill"[1]?

[1]
[https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/search?q=kill&unscoped_q=kill](https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/search?q=kill&unscoped_q=kill)

------
takeda
Is removing references to slavery actually being PC or preventing from being
reminded of dark time in American history in any way?

------
ulisesrmzroche
Easy way to root out assholes when hiring: rename master to main. They’ll show
themselves the door

I’m gonna write a whole blog post about this

------
Separo
I knew there would be these petty comments in here. For people who in general
work in such an intellectual and ephemeral pursuit there is so much pathetic
clinging to meaningless terms. The computer does not care. It's only the human
beings in the community that do.

And it's our choice whether to be neutral and inclusive or miserly trolls
clinging to meaningless out of date terms coined in times when these weren't
considerations. Rise above it. Embrace other people's experiences that maybe
you have not had and have no idea about. Just appreciate that it may have
happened to someone and not you and you do not have to reject them by posting
a petty comment. Call it Big Cantaloupe / Little Cantaloupe. It doesn't
matter. At least then nobody would be reminded of a murdered ancestor or the
nature of the person who named it when all they wanted to do was use a stupid
file system.

Don't be a dick. Be nice. x

~~~
mikecoles
"meaningless terms" \- It's also our choice to avoid working with those who
exhibit theatrical intolerance and objection to such "meaningless terms".
"Embrace other people's experiences" such as what? How many in the IT field
have experience as a master or slave (other than kinks)? None.

Pointless changing of words because of "feelings" is why the majority is
laughing at you behind your back. If there is something you want to change, go
for something with meaning. Stupid things like this illustrate that there is
no issue and you need to make up problems because there are none.

------
rodgerd
Unsurprising that HN can't manage better than the level of pearl-clutching by
people invested in maintaining "master/slave terminology" as its discourse.

------
turrini
dang: just for context, I've posted this here for discussion... Don't know why
it was flagged.

~~~
xupybd
Normally things are flagged here due to controversy. If a post starts
political arguments it often gets flagged

------
artistsvoid
I will try to avoid controversy here and word this carefully: I can't help but
think that something is wrong in the minds of people who take offense at
something like this. If in the context of programming and system
administration, the term master/slave is 'offensive' and makes you think of
racism, and one group of people being oppressed by another, your mind seems to
make some completely different connections from mine.

Maybe I am not fine-tuned into 'spotting' such things, which is the argument I
would expect; but maybe some just have developed a sensitivity far beyond any
reasonable amount in taking offense, which is my suspicion. How about we talk
about meaningful ways to stop racism, which we can all agree is bad and
unwarranted, jumping into action blindly might feel like you are doing
something, but what exactly is this doing?

I am very annoyed by such blindly executed and in my opinion unwarranted
activism, and as soon as one speaks out against, one has to hide from the
incoming attacks. So I guess HR departments have to check naming conventions
in programs now for misogyny / politically non-correct / possibly racist
terminology before release?

By the way: I actually always thought of master / slave as completely racially
independent terminology in general? If in a book a white man were enslaved by
some Asian tribe, how would master/slave terminology be non-correct in
describing the participants?

~~~
ashtonkem
This seems to me to miss the point.

I genuinely doubt that many people are offended at master/slave terminology. I
personally am not offended, yet I would prefer if we did not use such terms.

Why? Because words matter, and I recognize that where we decide to move terms
into every day parlance has an impact on how people think. This after all is
the basis of some groups trying to “reclaim” a word by trivializing it’s
usage.

As a thought experiment imagine if we got into the habit of naming services or
concepts after the Holocaust. How do you think that the casual, daily
reference to that event in a different context would affect our perceptions of
the 20th century genocide? Would it make us treat the Holocaust more casually?
Now imagine how you’d feel if German companies started using that term
casually. Kind of icky, right?

That being said, I don’t think that anyone who doesn’t want to go to the
trouble to replace every instance of these words going forward is a racist,
nor should we tolerate such abuse from a crowd that’s nominally supposed to be
doing the right thing. We can advocate for well-meaning changes without being
jerks, I hope.

Personally I plan on just using new terms going forward, but I won’t go back
and rename every single thing I’ve ever written.

Also, master/slave really isn’t racially independent in America. Slavery is an
institution that has cropped up in many places at many times; but here in
America slavery refers specifically to the form of chattel slavery that
occurred here, and therefore does carry more than a hint of racial overtones.

~~~
artistsvoid
Thank you for this well written non-inflammatory response, I really appreciate
it. I can see your point, but I guess we just have a different idea 'how high'
sensitivity should be.

Obviously you don't name something in programming 'pimp' / 'bitch', or even
more extreme I suppose: 'white_guard' / 'n_____', that's obviously childish,
unwarranted, and just for the sake of provocation. Like I've said though I
think of 'master/slave' as perfectly fine descriptions regarding their
function and I have always thought of them as racially neutral terms, and if
you want to change long-standing naming convention there should be a case for
it. And I just think it isn't there.

By the way: For the very first time in my life, a few days ago, have I ever
thought of 'whitelist'/'blacklist' in terms of skin color.

white vs black, bright vs dark, , "shining bright light" vs "tempted by
darkness", etc, it was almost a Eureka moment: "How can people think of skin
color there?"

That makes me think that people are spurted into activism, blindly 'looking
for problems', and once you start looking it's easy to see it everywhere. We
are pattern seeking animals - if I believe in conspiracy theories, I will over
evaluate whatever confirms my beliefs - and I honestly think the same happens
in cases of people who take social justice too far (thinking of 'master/slave'
as inappropriate naming conventions in programming after decades of use) ;
(and I hope it's unnecessary to add: I am not denying the reality of racism ;
just trying to doubt the usefulness and legitimacy of taking the sensitivity
into far off areas and to a degree that is unwarranted)

I guess I am just emotionally detached from this as can be, as someone who
doesn't follow daily news, and is not an American. It's weird for me to
accept:

'why can't I use master/slave anymore?'

'because a black man was murdered by police in a country across the Atlantic,
and now they are looking to prune any mention of slavery from everywhere they
can find it'

'what?'

You can't clean up the language to a point of where 'no one' is offended.
Master/Slave seems like such a low level of 'potential for controversy' to me,
that I am really worried about 'if that one isn't acceptable after decades of
use anymore, what next'

~~~
mplanchard
So what’s interesting to me here is that you note that some names are
inappropriate to use, because of the cultural context surrounding them:

> Obviously you don't name something in programming 'pimp' / 'bitch', or even
> more extreme I suppose: 'white_guard' / 'n_____', that's obviously childish,
> unwarranted, and just for the sake of provocation.

These are all words with literal meanings that could theoretically apply to
some aspect of some system. But you admit that these words are inappropriate
to use, presumably because of the additional connotation and cultural context
that comes along with them.

Is it so difficult to imagine that other words, words that you do not
personally have the cultural context to find offensive, could feel the same
way to other people who have lived through different experiences?

I am glad that you realized that it’s theoretically possible that the bias in
our language of associating blackness with evil or badness might be something
that affects people. I think it’s easy to say something like, “oh it’s never
been about skin color, don’t be so touchy” when you’ve never had that language
constantly around you while society is also actively telling you that you are
worth less because you are black. But if you’re a black child being bullied in
school for your skin color, that language might take on shades of meaning that
seem much more sinister.

~~~
artistsvoid
It's not at all difficult to assume that something is offensive to someone,
but not to me. It's extremely easy that for any different person, different
phrases are considered offensive. But the solution of 'let's create a world
where nothing is offensive anymore' seems ludicrous.

I don't think there is a racial bias in associating blackness w/ evil or
'whiteness' with good, I rather think it has to do with night/darkness vs
day/light. Do you think 'red' as a widely used 'warning light' somehow relates
to 'native Americans'?

Like I've said, I never thought of it in terms of race ; once you start
actively believing that biases are EVERYWHERE, you will see them everywhere,
automatically. And I think for one, that this is an extremely obsessive way to
live, and also a battle one can never ever win, and the question 'where does
your quest for justice stop', is warranted.

I always thought there was a 'common sense' approach, pruning any mention of
'slave' as terminology in programming / system administration after decades of
use for me seems to be extremely far away from it.

Whatever happens w/ naming conventions here, I will eventually adapt. But I
seriously fear that this quest for justice, especially in 'language' goes far
beyond common sense and is about actively looking for problems, that are none
until identified.

~~~
mplanchard
> I don't think there is a racial bias in associating blackness w/ evil or
> 'whiteness' with good, I rather think it has to do with night/darkness vs
> day/light. Do you think 'red' as a widely used 'warning light' somehow
> relates to 'native Americans'?

I think maybe I didn’t make my point clear here. I don’t think that in these
particular examples there exists racial bias in the language. The language
(most languages) is biased (but not racially) towards associating darkness
with evil and light with good. If you personally are experiencing racial bias
due to having darker skin, I think language like this can _feel_ very
different than it would otherwise, even if the language itself is not
explicitly racially biased. I’m not saying we should abandon the whole
light/dark evil/good dichotomy, but just pointing out that things built in to
the culture that aren’t technically related to race in any way may feel very
different if you’re on the “good” side than if you’re on the “bad” side.

> It's not at all difficult to assume that something is offensive to someone,
> but not to me. It's extremely easy that for any different person, different
> phrases are considered offensive. But the solution of 'let's create a world
> where nothing is offensive anymore' seems ludicrous.

I agree that it seems impossible to avoid offending every individual. But,
when it’s so easy to avoid using language that has negative connotations for a
significant portion of the population, why shouldn’t we? Why cling so tightly
to _not_ being kind, out of some kind of slippery-slope assumption that if we
give ground and have empathy this once, the word will end?

It’s really odd to me how offended people get by the suggestion that there
might be something offensive about the language they use. I have no ties to
the words I use. If I want to be friends with someone or to include them in
what I’m doing, and they have a problem with some word I use because of some
context that I haven’t experienced, it does me no harm to use a different
word.

> I always thought there was a 'common sense' approach, pruning any mention of
> 'slave' as terminology in programming / system administration after decades
> of use for me seems to be extremely far away from it.

Here I think you’re taking offense at a situation that doesn’t exist. What
I’ve seen is people trying to avoid perpetuating the problem by not adding new
instances of the world slave to new code/systems, or making updates to use
different language when it’s convenient and someone’s already touching the
code. These actions hardly seem to me to be pruning any mention of the term
from decades’ worth of software.

Language, it’s important to remember, is descriptive, not prescriptive. It is
always changing along with society and culture. It’s therefore natural that
what is considered acceptable or not is going to change over time, and we’ve
always had to deal with this as a society. Look at people wanting to ban books
for using words that have become offensive, as an example. The interesting
thing about software, as opposed to books or words engraved in stone on
monuments, is that it’s often very _easy_ to change the words that are used,
because software isn’t a historical artifact but a living thing. And as a
living thing, people are going to want it to reflect their own current
societal norms. So changes like this seem an inevitable part of a long-lived
industry that creates such mutable products.

Regardless, it hardly seems worth getting so worked up over someone else
choosing to make this decision in the codebase that they maintain. It is their
right as maintainers to do so, and if you disagree so strongly with them
making this small token of empathy, you can of course choose to use another
filesystem.

~~~
artistsvoid
I am too tired to de-construct this in full, just a few short points:

\- It's about where the goal post is. Let's not forget what the original
discussion is about. You invoke a lot of 'emotional imagery' ('why not be
kind'), we are talking about long standing naming conventions that can be
thought of as being non-racial and no one had a problem with 2 months or 2
years ago, now becoming a problem because people think they are doing
something positive here, while it's not addressing ANY problem regarding
racism at all ...

\- software is both, living and artifact - we are not talking about a new
program written in 2020 using some weirdly offensive and arcane naming
conventions, we are talking about retroactively updating naming conventions in
programs. Regarding societal norms we always play catch up, should I vet my
code once a week to check if it is still conforming to PC-culture?

\- software is a technical thing, we programmers like to think of it as non-
political ; like I've said multiple times I think already: when I read source
code thinking about racism is so far off my radar, that it's insane to see
'master' and 'slave' and think of it (for me, at least). Which also ties in
with the point I tried to make, that some people are so ingrained in their
social justice war, that I think they just see 'racism' and 'bias' EVERYWHERE.

\- a lot of people feel 'pressured' into complying with what they regard to be
ridiculous changes (when it comes to technical merit) because there is a
certain amount of people who view non-compliance with whatever their current
crusade is about as 'unkind' \- if you think me using master/slave terminology
has something to do with the topic of racism in the United States, I refuse to
make that connection I guess.

\- ultimately: it's probably more about people patting themselves on the back,
for having done something, and for having changed nothing - and I deeply
resent that. In other words: blind activism at its best.

------
tekproxy
This is kink shaming.

------
boltzmann_brain
We're witnessing mass insanity on levels never thought possible.

~~~
Merem
Some people just have too much time on their hands. And it doesn't help that
media is spreading this, as it generates clicks which in turn generates money.
As such, total non-issues will be made an issue.

The thing is, it's not even "mass" insanity. Working people who are busy with
a family and such don't really post on social media, as they simply have no
time. This creates a pretty large divide between the internet and real life.
Though, I say this as someone not being part of the tech world which is more
closely connected with social media.

------
dvfjsdhgfv
> The horrible effects of human slavery continue to impact society. The casual
> use of the term "slave" in computer software is an unnecessary reference to
> a painful human experience.

What a strange world, really. Imagine the Germans renaming the command "kill",
SIGKILL and so on for the same reason. (Or even stronger, as direct victims of
WW2 are still alive.)

------
sandstrom
I think this word censorship is meaningless and dangerous. It sets a bad
precedent, anyone can get offended by anything. That doesn’t justify
censorship.

It's not even a white/black thing. White people has had white slaves
(millions), black people has had black slaves (also millions).

The Atlantic slave trade is just example of slavery. It has existed in many
civilizations:

“Evidence of slavery predates written records, and has existed in many
cultures. [...] the practice of slavery [...] proliferated after the invention
of agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution, about 11,000 years ago.

Slavery was known in civilizations as old as Sumer, as well as in almost every
other ancient civilization, including ancient Egypt, ancient China, the
Akkadian Empire, Assyria, Babylonia, ancient Iran, ancient Greece, ancient
India, the Roman Empire, the Arab Islamic Caliphate and Sultanate, Nubia and
the pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas.”

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery)

~~~
oliwarner
Sure... But _why not_ remove imagery of slavery from tech syntax?

We have plenty of other organisational terms to denote a higher rank. What's
wrong with those? They might even be more accurate. I don't suppose DBAs get
in a ship to pillage and loot foreign lands for their database redundancy.

I see too many people arguing semantics or historical bias, or whataboutisms
but barely anybody giving positive arguments to preserve the master-slave
terms in tech. If "all races have had slavers" is the best you've got, perhaps
it's time for change.

~~~
manuelaljibes
There's no technical reason to make this change, it's an annoying change with
literally zero positive impact on the world, this won't abolish slavery nor
will it help anyone, it may help the promoters of this stupidity to feel
better about themselves, like "look at us! we are aligned with the PC agenda!
We're sooo progressive and docile!"

~~~
oliwarner
No technical reason, but clearly a political reason. And politics matter in an
open project where diversity and collaboration are so important to their long-
life goals.

You don't agree —and that's fine— but does it harm you to rename it? That is
past the initial inconvenience of it not being the word that it's been
before... Is that any more inconvenient than the other API changes that almost
all software goes through at some point?

I can understand some light grumbling, but I don't see why people get so bent
out of shape they feel the need to start summarising slavery through the ages.

"It's just a word" swings both ways.

~~~
manuelaljibes
What harm does it do to rename things based on nothing but the pathetic
impulse to abide by the nonsensical PC agenda? Well, it introduces the need
for me as a developer to adjust to a new naming scheme for no good reason, we
know APIs change all the time, and adjusting to new naming schemes is part of
the job, but when a project decides to break an API its always for a good
reason, no professional team will ever break an API on a whim, because in most
projects, people are aware that breaking APIs immediately deprecates massive
amounts of code, and that these changes should only be made only if it's
absolutely necessary; breaking APIs and forcing everyone else that just want
to get the work done to comply to this nonsense is not going to help slaves
around the world, if you really want to take action, set a donation prompt for
a charity on the README or in the program itself as Vim does, but don't annoy
the rest of us with this bs just so that you can feel better about yourself
ffs

~~~
oliwarner
I can't tell if I'm just spinning my wheels at this point, but they're not
trying to make themselves feel better, it's about fostering an environment for
including those who do care. OpenZFS wants a more diverse user and developer
community. Good for them.

And if you think that no professional developers ever break their APIs on a
whim, you're either very young, or haven't been paying attention. Google does
this _all the time_ across their ecosystem. It's annoying, but you learn to
get over it.

If you don't like it, fork it.

~~~
manuelaljibes
"it's about fostering an environment for including those who do care", that's
exactly right, and my whole argument is that those who do care are not the
ones that are affected by slavery, the people that care about these innocuous
things are first-world neocons who haven't had to deal with any real problems
in their lives, and my annoyance comes by the fact that people now just don't
seem to have the guts to stand up to these trolls; this literally won't help
make their community or userbase more diverse, in any case, it introduces
confusion because any guides or tutorials around the net that used the term
slave are now misleading/deprecated

------
dependenttypes
Small note: this is openzfs specifically.

If that makes them happy then good for them. Although I personally think that
this is a waste of time and also dislike the moral high ground that they
attempted to take (trying to take advantage of the current climate to
advertise their virtues), as if these that do not change the terminology used
are somehow morally inferior. I do wonder if that would cause some form of
incompatibility (between existing zfs tools and other zfs implementations,
including previous openzfs versions) but I presume that they were careful
about that. In addition I am annoyed that they decided to censor the linked
thread.

Edit: apparently it did not change any API names.

Edit2: Surely I am not the only one who finds it ironic that they are using
GitHub - a company which supports ICE, right?

