Re: About the use of the terms master/slave and blacklist, proposal to replace.

On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 10:00:22AM -0700, Stanislav Malyshev wrote: > Hi! > > > I think the time has come for the PHP internals to discuss the use of master/slave and > > blacklist terminologies. > > As everyone can see, we are going through times of change in the world, see > > #blackLivesMatter for example. > > While your quest for more just and fair world is noble and laudable, I > think your energies are misplaced in this case. Terms like "blacklist" > are established industry terms (and are used also outside the industry - > there's a TV show which is called literally "The Blacklist") and have > absolutely nothing to do with race or any other human traits. Objecting > to "blacklist" makes as much sense as objecting to terms such as > "whitespace", "blackout", "white paper", "red-black > tree", "rainbow > tables", or declaring the keyword "final" to be anti-Semitic because > there was "final solution". I think there is many other ways to more > productively spend your time than inventing reasons why innocent words > suddenly have nefarious meanings. However, you are, as literally anybody > is, with no regard to any political labels, free to submit a pull > request against PHP source and we will take a look at it then. +1 The word/term 'blacklist' seems to go back to 1639: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklisting Master/slave is used in many places in engineering where something makes something else do something. There is nothing that suggests of one human controlling another. Eg: in car brakes: https://www.carthrottle.com/post/how-master-cylinders-and-slave-cylinders-work-and-their-importance/ Let us say that we do eliminate terms that some people somehow think refers to them, where does it stop ? Today it is race (or 'black' skin colour). Tomorrow it could be: * 'black hole' (as in collapsed star) * 'brown out' (as in what happens when the electricity is not good enough) - is that offensive to people with brown skin ? * 'yellow pages' (as in NIS) as it might offend some oriental people ? * 'fat client' (as in client software that does a lot) as it offends people with a weight problem ? * 'male/female connectors' ? * 'zombie processes' ? There are many, many. Quite hard to write a list because we use the terms every day with without any intention of offending anyone. Then other people who identify as groups, eg: sexual, disability, hair colour, age, jobs, ... Once you have a list: then come up with lists of words in other (non English) languages. Once we have done all that then it will need to be revised in a couple of decades time when different words will, by some people, regarded as offensive. In other words: you can never win. It is very easy to take offence when none is meant at all. One needs to look at intent. -- Alain Williams Linux/GNU Consultant - Mail systems, Web sites, Networking, Programmer, IT Lecturer. +44 (0) 787 668 0256 https://www.phcomp.co.uk/ Parliament Hill Computers Ltd. Registration Information: https://www.phcomp.co.uk/Contact.html #include <std_disclaimer.h>