Oh ffs. Get some education: <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=dictionary+master&oq=dictionary+master" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=dictionary+master&oq=diction...</a><p>These are just distractions from real issues. This isn't even incremental progress; it's a conscious choice to do nothing while looking good like you're actually "doing something".
If your initial response to this is negative, and you aren't a member of a demographic that doesn't have recent, painful memories of slavery with horrible, tragic effects that persist to this day, then you really need to check yourself.<p>For some people who've been through this trauma, the words "master" and "slave" evoke one painful meaning first, before the alternative meaning is understood. If you've never personally experienced something like this, I've read it described as being punched in the stomach. And it's wholely unnecessary, so why not change it?<p>Words matter. Maybe they don't to you, but trust that people aren't lying when they say it does to them.<p>I'm super disappointed by the callous response to this: when people talk about gatekeeping in tech, or the myriad failures of tech to be accessible to marginalized people, this is what they mean. This is the culture that enables that.
Ideas like this are a great way to signal how privileged you are. Black people being murdered by the cops don't care about master/slave jargon in technology, it's hilariously out of touch that someone would even think this is at all important with respect to the issues going on right now.
Personally I feel like these changes are silly but it is not a hill I want to die on. I understand some may think this is a slippery slope but as a society we've been sliding down it for years now. Just make the change and move on. Focus on problems that matter.
I was hesitant to submit this article because it seems extremely insignificant in the broader context of current societal changes.<p>But then it made me ponder the wide extent to which current events are causing people of all walks of life to question and reevaluate even the smallest details of everything around us. Do I think that the proposed changes would make a noticeable difference to society? Probably not. Ultimately do I care if this specific effort succeeds or fails? Nope, don't really care either way.<p>However, I do think the broader discussion about questioning how we use language, and where certain colloquialisms originated, is important. But I do see opinions at both extreme ends of this topic which are not trying to have good faith discussions, and instead are focused on the absolute worst case scenarios. Maybe the reactions to this story are even more significant than the story itself.
I'm all for these changes on a personal level, but when a company like Github (and by extension MS) makes a PR move virtue signaling like they actually did something then we should be skeptic, because they have time and time again supported ICE and other law-enforcement that tells a very different story.
it seems the end game of this is to disappear the words slave and master from our vocabulary, so we can't express those ideas anymore and let slavery expand unhindered
“We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!”<p>― Arthur Miller, The Crucible
Some tools already do this. Reason switched in 2017: <a href="https://www.reasonstudios.com/en/reason/updates/release-notes" rel="nofollow">https://www.reasonstudios.com/en/reason/updates/release-note...</a><p>> Reason 10.0.1 / Reason Essentials 10.0.1 Release Notes<p>> ReWire master/mixer and slave/device is now always referred to as "host" and "device"
A lot of the other comments here seem absurd to me. We should all be able to imagine terminology that would be repulsive. (I.e., imagine if some tech term or project name were a racial slur. Would you really argue against changing it?). So yea, there's a line to draw somewhere; we can't say every technical term is immune from critique.<p>So then the argument is that in this particular case it's just not a big deal and people shouldn't be upset about it. Well, if you're saying that, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that your recent ancestors didn't have to deal with slavery!<p>What percentage of people in tech are Black? Some single digit percentage? What if tech were 95% Black? Would we really say master/slave? Of course not. That wording has a lot of baggage for some people! So even if 9 out of 10 people don't have a problem with the word and see this as a PC slippery slope, that doesn't mean the minority is wrong to request changes. It's not difficult to change the terminology, and it helps some people, so why fight it.
White people fighting worthless causes to feel good about themselves and patting themselves on the back because they fought away racism by changing names, episode 2345.<p>But sure, go ahead, make the term disappear. That will surely fix the underlying issue.
What is that make people react to events that happen in the US differently than those outside of the US? I mean there are people who die and people who protest about a variety of different issues outside of the US (just recently protests in Hong Kong, Iraq, and Lebanon). However, it never causes this magnitude of response, from media platforms and tech companies, to music production terminology.
To move forward, you must be willing to make changes. If something is causing controversy, you cannot ignore it for long before it drags you and everyone else down. If you do not identify with the controversy, you should step away from it and let the others who can lead the change. You can focus your energy on things that matter to you.
Cars have master and slave cylinders. I never liked the terms because I don’t think the terms a very descriptive. Pedal cylinder and wheel cylinder describe the devices better.
It's remarkable how much drama is being manufactured over a non-issue. There's a zero percent chance the people putting in the effort to promote this don't realize that 'Master' is an industry term of art meaning original or reference copy.
There we go again with a Rubocop-like complaint. Are we at the pinnacle of ridicule yet ? Because I don't think I can take anymore. The amount of bigotry in the news is puzzling.
Changing reality with language is a Soviet propaganda tool, actually more and more used elsewhere. Look at Trump, BoJo et al. It doesn’t change reality. It muddled the problem, confounds the description of the problem with the solution, and makes us forget where we come from. The shame of using the term ‘slave’ for an electronic device or ‘master’ for a Git branch is here to stay, to remind us where we come from. Erasing them is fighting history and language, and as such worse than futile.<p>Sure, some terms are outright offensive, but this is not the case here.<p>There are some factual errors in the article too, but I’ll leave that. As a Slav I have no issue with the term “slave”, not least because it’s not the root of the word...
Next steps following this logic:<p>- Stop using the word "communism" because it may offend ex-USSR citizens<p>- Stop using the word "famine" because it may remind bad memories to some africans<p>- Stop using negative words to talk about the chinese government because it could offend chinese people<p>- Stop using the words "bible" and "jesus" because it might offend muslims<p>The world will sure become a better place without those negative feelings...
Another opinion: Instead for going after the words, go after the facts.<p>The US is the world's largest slave owner state. Their prison system is the modern equivalent of a slave economy under slave jurisdiction, and the treatment of illegal foreign labor not much different. How about legal reforms?
Disclaimer: I'm not and English native speaker and there's no equivalent in my language, in fact they usually are not translated and used in English. (I mean, there is an equivalent, but it's never used in this context)<p>My position about this issue is ambivalent.<p>From a purely human standpoint I understand it, truly.<p>When we use those terms referring to tools, I don't see much sense.<p>When men used bulls to pull the plough it really was a master-slave relationship<p>The bull could not be the master, even if it wanted too, a human is not strong enough to pull the plough effectively<p>It's a symbiotic relation between two elements where one is in charge of the "intellectual" part and the other of the physical one.<p>We can use controller and agent, but controlling is problematic too<p>We can use manager and worker, but it still implies that there's a disparity between the two<p>Frontend/backend doesn't fully capture what's going on<p>We use master/slave because one side is taking all the decisions, the other is just obeying<p>It's bad, I recognize it, and maybe it's time to change, but no amount of re-wording will change the fact that it's mainly used nowadays for tools that work that way, not for people.<p>Maybe leader/follower looks like a better choice, but really isn't, follower sounds more dumb to me, at least slaves rebelled throughout history, followers don't. And a leader can be as bad as a master who owns slaves.<p>Main/secondary is somewhat the best of them all, but it only works for systems were any secondary node can be promoted to replace the main in case of failures, which is not always the case.<p>Bull/man is not main/secondary for example.
This is really creepy and I have an intense dislike for the people behind it. Nobody alive today was a slave and choosing to become ass hurt at industry standard terms, which aren't even racial in nature (every race has been enslaved), isn't acceptable.<p>I never used Github as my primary host for projects, merely as a social network to show off my projects. But I'll be moving away from them now because I simply don't want to see crazy lefties redefining my language to suit their whims. And there's no discussion at all, it's all unilateral or you're a Nazi.<p>OK then.
They’re coming after tech. Don’t worry, changing terminology will change the underlying issues. Just be careful not to cause thoughtcrime once neuralink is feasible in a few decades.