edit: I’m genuinely curious about this, and don’t have a position on the “master” thing. Not trying to start a flame war.
We've never "determined" that. It's merely that some obsessive bossy people suggested it. And mainly people from just one country with particular issues -- whereas English is spoken in just about everywhere in the world.
Not to mention the word master has a history beyond slavery, and was used in all kinds of contexts historically with absolutely no reference to slavery.
The etymology itself has nothing to do with slave masters (any more than "owner" implies "slave owner").
master: from late Old English mægester "a man having control or authority over a place; a teacher or tutor of children," from Latin magister (n.) "chief, head, director, teacher"
Saddens me that you got downvoted for asking an earnest question, I guess people are scared of what this topic will devolve into.
I don't mind renaming those to main in fact I started looking into automating the conversion but at the same time it does seem like mission creep. main doesn't actually have the same meaning. In pressing CDs/DVDs/Blu-rays we have "gold masters" which are used to create the molds for the presses for the discs. A master key opens all locks. Those usages all seem unrelated and arguably so does the git usage.
Removing master/slave from tech seems 100% correct. Removing all uses of the word "master" like Darth Vader "I was but a learner but now I am the master" seems wrong and if we aren't going to remove all of them then why are we remove it from git since like those others usages it and zero relation to the problem?
p4/piper is MAIN
SVN is 'trunk'
mercurial is 'default'
--
I'd be upset if we were changing commonly held terminology or if it had more meaning.. but it's completely arbitrary and all it costs is the minor reeducation of all github/git users and the invalidation of all prior documentation.
The piety of those who wish everyone to be re-educated and the corpus of documentation to be rendered invalid would be sickening. At least in this instance it brings concepts more in line.
We need less confusing and diverse verbiage in the industry generally speaking, when we refer to the same concepts (server/instance/machine/node being examples), so I think the change is welcome on those merits alone, and if it happens to make people feel better, though there's no evidence of that, then great.
However it's important to understand that if the motivation is purely political, then this can be classified as political correctness, which has proven time and time again to be ineffective and actually /harmful/ to the left; as the right are clever to use it as a recruiting tool- often openly pissing off the left and making them hypersensitive to anyone not towing the line. This was true in the early 90's and it's true again today.
To quote Stephen Fry on political correctness: "if someone wants to shout faggot at me, I don't care, as a gay man. I know I'm supposed to, but I'm supposed to care on behalf of people who are, supposedly weaker than me. and I think it's the most patronising thing in the world. It's exactly the same political correctness that I grew up with which was then, the kind of religious political correctness; which is people complaining about television programmes, about swearing and nudity and violence: 'I am not shocked myself, it's just the vulnerable young minds, you see!'; well, fuck that, that's just not good enough. It really isn't. and that's my objection. it's.. denouncing from the pulpit.. I mean, Russia has political correctness, but in Russia the political correctness is that you can't say Tchaikovsky was gay."[0]
These comments were given before a debate (which unfortunately was derailed frequently) on the efficacy of political correctness; and he made detailed points about words being immediately co-opted to mean hateful things, if there is hateful intent, and largely intent is the most important factor to control for, certainly not language.
I will link to the full debate below;[1]
So, typically I'm against these kinds of measures, and that's the foundation on what this change was about.
If a change can stand by other merits, then sure, but to assume that this will help even a little, with no evidence provided- and to attribute such little weight to the human time in reconfiguring and reeducating is not just patronising in of itself, it's a little dehumanising to those it supposedly supports and forces re-education and labour on the entire development world.
I believe that to be immoral; unless, of course, the change can stand on other merits.
[0]: https://youtu.be/vsR6LP7Scg0?t=422 (13m)
Given that GitHub and git-scm approved of removing this somewhat "problematic" terminology despite the original context being unrelated to master/slave, etc. Where would you draw the line on replacing these terms?
Slave master is just a subcategory of uses of the word master. Here's the etymology, as per the dictionary:
master: from late Old English mægester "a man having control or authority over a place; a teacher or tutor of children," from Latin magister (n.) "chief, head, director, teacher"
The corresponding word for slaves was in turn explicit about "someone who can't refuse order".
To use the word to make light of the history of slavery is vulgar and socially unacceptable. The myriad other perfectly innocent uses of it are just fine. Personally, I have no intention of obeying any of the new rules of the new Cultural Revolution.
I think you're on something though. There will be no end.
Does Mastercard apply to this change? Perhaps being a blacksmith is 'offensive' as well. Maybe having a 'Masters' degree from Yale is just as bad as saying Headmaster or 'Dark mode' and the list goes on. As soon as you remove the context and start racializing everything, it doesn't make any sense to immediately associate it as 'racist'.
It will get to the point where someone will eventually reject such changes and will risk of being called a racist for not supporting it.
[reply to me, after I suggested the word "master" is not a bad one but the act is]
>> I agree that the word isn't necessarily bad itself, but the issue is that humans don't operate on dictionary definitions; we operate on connotations. Master/slave terminology is kind of vague alongside it referencing/being a product of immoral history, so why not make our terminology more accurate and stop normalizing the old terminology?
>> If you were a person whose ancestors were systematically enslaved getting started in tech, would you say "oh those aren't bad words, they're just words" or would you be a little off put that the field glorifies historically racist terminology by using it everywhere that it's vaguely related?
[my reply]
> If you were a person whose ancestors were systematically enslaved
I am such a person.
> would you be a little off put that the field glorifies historically racist terminology
I think this is the distinction, there's no glorification being given, the words we tend to use in computer science and operating system design are relatively clinical.
There are many points here to argue; you could say that people without parents may be put off by 'orphan', or people who have had siblings or loved ones killed as children could be put of by the terms "kill" and "child" especially as they're often used in conjunction.
In fact that last one also applies to me as one of my childhood friends was murdered.
There's other, potentially less harmful terms, like "class-based" programming, if you know anything about Britain and especially the British Raj you know that this is a very touchy subject. In fact it has far reaching implications in India today.
The application of a word should not be marred by the history of a word, especially words that near-universally apply.
> so why not make our terminology more accurate and stop normalizing the old terminology?
This is a well meaning intention, and you know what they [say about the path to hell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_road_to_hell_is_paved_with...).
I can think of three arguments against, and they are weakly held so don't think I'm being absolutist or combative or that I can't see reason:
1) There exists a concept called the euphemism treadmill: simply stated it says that the words we typically use to refer to "bad things" is co-opted and abused until it becomes a bad word itself. If we cannot refer to slavery, then we will likely use other words which are loosely related and then those will become bad words also. It is better to simply state that we're not referring to the /human/ slavery, merely the relationship of components.
2) There is a large corpus of work and workers in the world; it might be meaningless to change a few words universally, but you're implicitly asking that potentially hundreds of thousands of people use new language (where english may not be their primary language and so attach to key-words) AND potentially making breaking changes between software revisions AND invalidating any existing documentation/blogspam that refers to these words.
3) There's no actual end to these kinds of changes. As soon as you draw a line you exclude people. My examples above about orphans and people who have been affected by child murder may seem absurd, but why are they less important? Twitter already announced that they would avoid using 'dummy value' because dummy can affect people.
reason 3 is not an application 'the slippery slope fallacy', it's the fact that you _must_ exclude some subset of people if you chase this way of thinking, there must be a line drawn at some point as it's fractal and the human brain is exceptional at finding reasons to be upset. It is infinite.
Think, even momentarily how a woman must feel upon persistently hearing the word ABORT.
And, I'm mostly for changing these terms in new software; but changing existing software in this manner makes it political and not technical; the truth will always be that there was no racist intent when people chose master/slave to refer to the relationship between worker objects and controller objects- it was the clearest term to denote the relationship (and, continues to be if you didn't already know this relationship, try it each way with a few nontechnical friends).
You may disagree but I think this conversation with Stephen Fry is telling (directly in relation to this topic, and not generally): https://youtu.be/vsR6LP7Scg0?t=420
Or at least... I hope that the word "master" is not completely verboten now.
That said, language definitely changes viewpoints. Things don’t always map 1-to-1 between languages, and a lot of cultures have different ideas about when and how to make these kinds of corrections. Sometimes language is set centrally, sometimes slang and memes propagate new terminology or reference current events. Words change the way culture changes, or so it’s been my experience...
For example, it makes sense to say "she mastered her fears" but not that "she mistressed her fears". Similarly, "she mastered fer field" works but "she mistressed her field" does not.
Really, it's just the usage as a noun that's problematic from a logical standpoint, as I see it. If the usage relates to "control" as master denotes as a noun, then it might be problematic (even if the historical use of controlling slaves is not the only use). If it refers to proficiency, or overcoming a hurdle, then it's not really related to the control aspect of the word, and the problematic history that comes along with it.
Now, whether society, or parts of it, are able to distinguish those usages from each other or whether that causes contention that is better avoided, I don't know.