[Spice-devel] Identifying and removing potentially divisive language

Frediano Ziglio fziglio at redhat.com
Fri Jul 3 07:03:13 UTC 2020


> Well... Your examples are contradicting: the "master/slave" relation used in
> electronics or psychology are re-using the slavery concepts too... This
> doesn't make it right :-)

That depends on the etymology and history, not an expert on this. 
I think there's a mild root, but still this require some technical language explanation. 
They can contradict only if they came from 2 separate roots, if this is true is means the there are multiple concepts involved not only one. 

> Now I'm not working in electronics or psychology, so I'm not going to try and
> change their wording.

> Regarding changing it now rather than waiting: Daniel is mentioning two hints
> - git, or github. As our code is hosted in gitlab, I would add that one too
> :)
> The idea being that if they choose a new word, it will become the new
> default, and we could align with them for consistency, rather than arguing
> among us and picking a potentially different name

It makes sense, but more at Gitlab level, not a world global de-facto for me 

> This doesn't prevent us from changing words that are in our code (like
> blacklist/whitelist?). I think there's not a lot of them.

> Regards,
> Julien

> Le jeu. 2 juil. 2020 à 16:09, Frediano Ziglio < fziglio at redhat.com > a écrit
> :

> > > 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
> 

> > Hi,
> 
> > I have different feeling about these changes. On one side I agree with
> 
> > Michal that these changes appears positive but they are potentially
> 
> > aggravating the real issue just hiding the problem.
> 
> > About the words I think "master" have multiple meaning, removing blindly
> 
> > because some meaning could remember some bad memories looks excessive.
> 
> > And even if this word is used in the "master&slave" reference hinting
> 
> > human slavery there are on the other side many uses (like master&slave
> 
> > relationship in electronic circuit or master&slave used in communication
> 
> > or in psychology) were this is far from human slavery.
> 
> > "blacklist" is very similar, it's used in a lot of places without negative
> 
> > references, "black" is simply a color which, being usually associated
> 
> > with no light is seen negative, not for race discrimination (like yin
> 
> > and yang concept). I checked multiple dictionaries and hardly find
> 
> > races references for "blacklist". For the same reasons we should remove
> 
> > wording like "dark", "white", "yellow", "black".
> 

> > About the "master" branch technically can be changed easily. I won't
> 
> > wait a "de-facto" change, if all project would wait a "de-facto" change
> 
> > the only name would be "master"! So if most of the group agree to change
> 
> > and like "main" I would just rename to "main".
> 

> > Regards,
> 
> > Frediano
> 

> > _______________________________________________
> 
> > Spice-devel mailing list
> 
> > Spice-devel at lists.freedesktop.org
> 
> > https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/spice-devel
> 

> --

> Julien ROPÉ

> Senior Software Engineer - SPICE

> jrope at redhat.com
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