Is it true that Brotli wanted the .bro file extension and moved away from it, because it was deemed offensive?
"In late September, Google released a compression algorithm called Brotli and gave files it makes the extension “.bro”.
But last week the extension was changed to “.br”.
The reason for the change is threads like this one, in which posters suggest that “'bro' has a gender problem” and “comes of[f] misogynistic and unprofessional due to the world it lives in.”
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/11/googles_bro_file_for...
modern filesystems can handle a few extra characters
.br<tab> is the same number of characters as .bro
So, instead of using a word which is mostly used as a friendly term of familiarity/endearment, they decided to go with a word which has connotations of racism.
I... can't even.
It's the world we live in today and much better to just avoid altogether now rather than try to defend/fix it later.
Now, you can not like that definition of bro, but that is for many people to common definition. The first thing that comes to mind when I hear 'bro' is the phrase 'bros before hoes', which is hard to interpret as not offensive to women.
Does this really connect to a compression format? Of course not, but if that is the first thing that comes to people's minds, why not switch to something with less baggage?
If you can't see how any of this could be offensive, then I'm afraid we just have different points of view.
Everything can be offensive to someone if they try hard enough. Just pick something that doesn't intend to be rude and ignore the few haters who have to make everything about them.
This isn't the most serious thing in the world, but there are definitely people who find it excluding, and that seems reasonable to me.
This is CS, a lack of groupthink-y "professionalism" is why I like this field.
While it's not nice to accept, most women I know well in computing have had bad experiences with "bro"-type people, saying they shouldn't / can't use a computer because they are a woman. On an at least monthly basis. For years. It grinds slowly over time.
If you think CS is professional, I've got some bad news for you -- there are quite a lot of toxic badly behaved people around unfortunately.
But my point is that this is not particularly offensive, it's purely a pun. I think being oversensitive can be as damaging as being unsensitive.
But I disagree with how hard you have to try. The people on here are trying fairly hard to make sure everyone knows how offensive they might find it. It didn't offend you, but you're offended that it might offend someone, or worse - that it might not offend someone. Nobody said "It's the compression method for white men", that whole racist angle is yours.
I find your shaming word-police game to be exclusionary. Please stop it.
Who exactly is being excluded? No-one (it seems to me) watch attached to .bro, it only existed for a couple of days.
If anyone did like it I doubt they'd have felt free to speak up.
> I do know people who found it offensive
I find Bros offensive - in my house. But the word? No. "Nazi" is just a word, Nazis are offensive.
> I can see no particular reason not to change the name.
Ditto there's no reason to. Someone went out of their way to take offense which was bounced around an echo chamber and now everyone is offended by something they didn't know existed before today.
That's not something we should reward.