[Spice-devel] Identifying and removing potentially divisive language

[Daniel P. Berrangé]

On Wed, Jul 01, 2020 at 04:15:07PM +0200, Victor Toso wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Wed, Jul 01, 2020 at 10:03:10AM +0200, Kevin Pouget wrote:
> > Hello SPICE community,
> > 
> > following Chris Wright (Red Hat CTO) blog post on "Making open
> > source more inclusive by eradicating problematic language" [1],
> > I would like to suggest that we have a look at SPICE source
> > code to find out if/where such language is used and how to
> > remove it.
> > 
> > To illustrate the motivations of this move, consider the phrase
> > "the final solution". I am quite sure you would agree that
> > these words cannot be used inside a project. You would agree
> > because the WWII events are still in minds and not so ancient
> > yet.  Git "master", or the "master/slave" pattern may not
> > trigger similar thoughts if your ancestors didn't suffer
> > slavery; "whitelist/blacklist" neither, if the color of your
> > skin doesn't get you into trouble (white=allow, black=deny).
> > Overall, I would advise, when thinking about these questions,
> > not to forget on which side your history/country/skin
> > color/sexual orientation sits you. If it's the oppressor side,
> > you're not at the right place to say it's not relevant.
> > 
> > ---
> > 
> > I had a quick `grep` look at SPICE code base, searching for
> > `blacklist/whitelist/slave` and I could only find very few
> > occurrences of these words, which is nice. Can you find other
> > problem words?
> > 
> > `master` is used for git default's branch, but not much
> > elsewhere. Let's discuss if we could get rid of this one, for
> > instance changing it to `main` (just a suggestion). I don't
> > think that it can break that many things (only the CI comes to
> > my mind, where the `master` branch may be treated differently)
> > as git name default branch's name is often omitted in the usual
> > workflows.
> > 
> > Please share your thoughts about this
> 
> Not a native english speaker but I've read a few discussions
> around the user of master as git as in master copy instead of
> master/slave. Another examples of the use of master from native
> speakers included master as in school teacher or someone that is
> in charge of something (the offense being where the subject of
> control is the slave).
> 
> Still, I don't really mind to changing it to main, even more if
> there are people that feel this can really be offensive in some
> way..

I think the primary downside in changing the branch name is if we
end up with different branch names chosen by each project. There is
value in the fact that essentially every project uses the same
branch name for their latest development branch, as it gives end
users consistent expectations.

I'm in favour of changing the branch name, but my inclination is
to wait and see a little longer, in order to identify what the
new defacto standard ends up being. "main" is a good bet as a new
standard, but it would be nice to see it "in action".

I'd be looking for two possible signs

Whether the Git maintainers themselves decide to standardize
on a new term.

What GitHub actually decide upon & roll out.

Either of those two decisions will set a defacto standard across a
vast number of projects, and thus it will be beneficial to have
alignment with those decisisons.

Regards,
Daniel
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