[Spice-devel] Identifying and removing potentially divisive language

Fri Jul 3 15:36:44 UTC 2020

On Fri, Jul 3, 2020 at 9:03 AM Frediano Ziglio <fziglio at redhat.com> wrote:

>
> 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
>

I agree that it makes sense to wait for gitlab or git projects decide

> 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
>>
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>>
>>
>
> --
>
> Julien ROPÉ
>
> Senior Software Engineer - SPICE
>
> jrope at redhat.com
> <https://www.redhat.com/>
>
>
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