One year ago, the django community replaced all occurrences of the words master/slave with the words leader/follower (https://github.com/django/django/pull/2692)

The justification for this step was that the terms master and slave may carry racially charged meanings to users.

I have a very clear opinion on this topic, but I would also like to hear what you think about this. Was it totally unneeded or a good step?

And remember, keep a nice and friendly conversation :)

Unneeded.
Words can mean different things depending on the context, and further muddying the water of technical terms because some people blur the lines between historical and technical backgrounds was not a good idea.

"leader" was used to designate Hitler in the past. Maybe django should start using the terms parent/child. Unless...

This is a never ending topic. the "slave" is enslaved to the master node, use terms correctly, period.

Getting all fluffy over some words.

I don't see the need to change the names if those modules really act as master and slave.

I remember the 'discussion' on Github. I remember how I nearly threw up. I remember how fucking mad I was. Because instead of actually trying to make a difference (by .. by doing basically anything more sane than criticizing the wording in a software project) they just caused a ruckus. I read an interesting article about these kind of things yesterday - but to stick to the topic, it was stupid, unneeded and set a bad precedent.

(30-09-2015, 05:56 AM)dtnt Wrote: I remember the 'discussion' on Github. I remember how I nearly threw up. I remember how fucking mad I was. Because instead of actually trying to make a difference (by .. by doing basically anything more sane than criticizing the wording in a software project) they just caused a ruckus. I read an interesting article about these kind of things yesterday - but to stick to the topic, it was stupid, unneeded and set a bad precedent.

Excellent article.

Quote:What are we doing to our students if we encourage them to develop extra-thin skin just before they leave the cocoon of adult protection?

That sentence sums it up pretty well.

It also strengthen my article about social changes in 2015.

The big problem is that the social media are feeding the movement and accelerating it.
They turn the crowd into paranoid puppets.
People "fight" to be the "most miserable amongst miserable" using those "micro-aggressions" as pretexts.

It would be like trying to help cancer patients by banning the word cancer from the dictionary.

Thanks for sharing.

(30-09-2015, 06:17 AM)venam Wrote: People "fight" to be the "most miserable amongst miserable" using those "micro-aggressions" as pretexts.

Micro-aggressions are real, but this isn't an example of one in the slightest. This is an example of them being paranoid apologists. Master and Slave aren't words that are insulting and they have a reasonable meaning outside the context of race.

I only wanted to ask because I am interested who could be offended by this.
If you assume that the words slave and master belong to a certain race, you are actually more racist than a
person who just uses these words for describing server things.

Also, who is offended by the words master/slave?
The few remaining victims of modern slavery have got other problems, and their masters won't be insulted if you call them like that, I guess.

How coincidental, one of my classes is discussing "The Coddling of the American Mind". Personally I find the text beneficial in understanding the mindset that young Americans tend to have now a days, however whether or not that mindset is good or bad (in any sense of the two words) is of course subjective to the individual. What I know about myself is that I do not have much care for such arguments; I believe they are petty and unnecessary. If I can articulate what the meaning behind the word is in the proper context, I could not care what they are. Granted this opinion isn't for everyone, nor should it be. In the end it is a controversial discussion to say the least. This spike in "verbal sensitivity" calls for reconsideration of intentions behind wording and perhaps a reminder that most of the time, people don't mean to be offensive in every way imaginable. What I'm trying to say by that is, we all know that the slave/master issue with Django is obviously related to a computer context, and it makes sense to use that type of wording, since it accurately gets the point across. Considering otherwise is completely baffling to me. But, perhaps I'm just desensitized in that regard.

Django unchained

As a master of many slaves, I find the idea of this very intolerant towards me.

The whole thing is very dumb and PC crap is creeping it's way into the open source community.

In this specific case if they want to go ahead and change the terminology that's been used for years and obviously has never intended to form a connection with the slave trade for a less descriptive term that will probably be deemed offensive in a couple of years then that's their loss, but there's no way as a maintainer I'd accept that pull request.

This is starting to become very annoying. It's bad enough that most men in the CS field (Especially more so than other STEM fields) get criticised over being sexist towards any female who works in CS by the general media and such, but now these so called 'liberals' and SJW's are invading places like github etc and making dumb changes like these. No one gives a shit how stuff is named in fucking *source code* as long as it follows a good coding style and is named appropriately, which it was..

Trying to restrict language somebody is using is a horrible idea.
I mean, it's okay if you do not want to use some words, but nobody should tell anybody what he
or she should say.

---

BTW: who did say there are only men in this forum?
For example, I could be as well a woman.

I could be a trans-gendered person. I could identify as potato. Who fucking cares. That's one of the things that grinds my gears. I don't, and in my personal opinion nobody should, care what gender, skin color, sexual orientation or whatever you are / have / identify with and / or as. You are nice to have a chat with? Fine by me. Or, even better: Shut up and hack.

@dtnt:
yes. you are of course right.
and in a way, I find the »Tits or GTFO« a bit understandable, because if you have to point out that you are somebody,
you should also deliver.

I'll just leave this here:

http://contributor-covenant.org/

This was apparently inspired by - and also is the brainchild of - the OP in the link kirby posted.

I am physically ill from reading that thread, by the way.

Apparently, the person behind this Contributor Covenant believes that a "Meritocracy" is a bad thing (You know, a merit-based system)

I'd just like to ask, why, in this day and age master and slave isn't automatically thought to refer to BDSM? That ought to come to mind before slavery...

Are they going to rename the py std module `mutex` to `fritzel`? Or would that force a dead lock?