OpenZFS removed master/slave terminology from its codebase

The terminology removed was inaccurate, as well as inappropriate.

Read the whole story

 

[SeanJW]

Maybe censoring is the wrong term to use. I have no problem with this situation, they have a right to do that.
I'm asking more on a general perspective. Is the term 'slave' socially deprecated ?

Also, other words as well, male / female / robot. I guess my genuine concern is being chided for usage of terms that in no way were meant to be racist or sexist.
For example , I always say, male connector or female port, nothing related to human sexuality

How you mean it and what it means are obviously related, but they're not the same thing.

I've seen people who grew up with racial pejoratives as just common insults and negative terms, and I can think of one case where one of them was talking to a Jewish friend and complained about how a business "jewed" him out of his money. He didn't literally mean "the bank is run by an international cabal of greedy Jewish people and they personally wanted to steal my money". It also doesn't matter. It's still a shitty thing to say, and even the intended meaning is steeped in racist stereotypes about Jews.

I regularly see people calling people and things "gay" as an insult. They don't literally mean that those people are sexually attracted to the same sex. They definitely don't mean that when they say it about objects. It also doesn't matter. It's still a shitty thing to say, and even the intended meaning is steeped in bigoted stereotypes about homosexuals.

Using a word doesn't necessarily mean that you know what it means to other people, and it doesn't even mean that you know what it means to you. That doesn't mean that the meaning isn't there or that it doesn't have power. When it's genuine ignorance it'd be best to just help people understand, but it so often isn't genuine ignorance and it's so damn common that it gets exhausting and frustrating after a while.

It's hard to be patient after all of that even when there's a good faith misunderstanding, and the "master/slave" issue's been discussed so much in the tech industry that pushback on it's pretty far from good faith.

Just jumping back in for a distinction...

All the things you mentioned 'Jew', 'gay' , even others such as 'towelhead', 'retarded' are insults based on the perception that the particular insult group is 'despicable'.
I might be wrong but I don't think anyone uses slave as an insult, (probably more as a sexual kink), and even though we have wage slavery , slavery doesn't exist now in the US as it was originally. It's a historical term, so there is a distinction.

That being said, I do hope that there's enough equality and time that words like these don't cause hurt to people that have been affected historically.

Just for a minor correction. Slavery in the US never stopped. It just was limited in how it could be applied. Former President Clinton and his wife had house slaves when he was Governor of Arkansas.

Slavery is still absolutely legal as punishment for crimes, and they had labour from the prison systems working for them. It was a long standing tradition for the state to use prison labour in that way.

It's not news, or particularly "scandalous" - it's well known. It *is* terrible though.

(and if you want a source, Hillary herself said it in her own book....)

[edit: It is distinct from chattel slavery where you're born a slave and so are your children and you are property that can be sold - forced labour as punishment ends when your sentence does in theory...]

You're getting downvoted but you're absolutely not wrong. For anyone that needs just a brief overview go watch The 13th on Netflix.

Or just read the 13th. It's a pretty simple one. I do like how the framers of it mostly just ripped the bandaid off. Britain took several acts to first stop buying/selling people, then owning people decades later, then shut down the exceptions (and part of it was probably their classic motivation "Fuck the French" - because the French just revived slavery with Haiti...). And of course Australia, despite being a British colony at the time, just ignored all that. We've got some great photos of our indigenous chained up as forced labour....

Nobody's covered with glory really.

 

[Jim Salter]

Former President Clinton and his wife had house slaves when he was Governor of Arkansas.

I would appreciate a little expansion on this and maybe a link. From the context I assume this expands to "prisoners from the nearest penitentiary were put on work furlough to be butlers / maids / whatever" ?

 

[BloodNinja]

Personally, I think master / slave more accurately expresses the intent of the code. All of the new terms are less clear and concise.

TIL in zfs one of the nodes beats on and abuses the other nodes

 

[Statistical]

Personally, I think master / slave more accurately expresses the intent of the code. All of the new terms are less clear and concise.

TIL in zfs one of the nodes beats on and abuses the other nodes

also that node stands around does no work and gets all the benefit from the node actually doing the work.

 

[Deleted member 4603]

Personally, I think master / slave more accurately expresses the intent of the code. All of the new terms are less clear and concise.

TIL in zfs one of the nodes beats on and abuses the other nodes

also that node stands around does no work and gets all the benefit from the node actually doing the work.

That node can also sell the lesser node for cash money, or shoot it if it tries to run away.

 

[Azethoth666]

Personally, I think master / slave more accurately expresses the intent of the code. All of the new terms are less clear and concise.

Nonsense. Obviously it needed to transition to dom / sub. These are both clearer, filled with brevity, and add the necessary spice needed to make your code interesting and sexy.

 

[J.King]

Personally, I think master / slave more accurately expresses the intent of the code. All of the new terms are less clear and concise.

TIL in zfs one of the nodes beats on and abuses the other nodes

also that node stands around does no work and gets all the benefit from the node actually doing the work.

That node can also sell the lesser node for cash money, or shoot it if it tries to run away.

Or molest it and spawn new nodes which can be sold for money?

 

[SeanJW]

Former President Clinton and his wife had house slaves when he was Governor of Arkansas.

I would appreciate a little expansion on this and maybe a link. From the context I assume this expands to "prisoners from the nearest penitentiary were put on work furlough to be butlers / maids / whatever" ?

The 13th Amendment itself is pretty clear

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.".

For the Clinton references, there's excerpts from her book:

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=aB5 ... 22&f=false

The "prison inmates" are working at the governer's mansion by long tradition; they're also not paid.

That's apparently true of prison labour in several states.

Slavery/involuntary servitude is still on the cards if you're a prisoner. The relative incarceration rates of African-Americans v. other demographics probably doesn't help that either :/

edit: Again, this is not news, or illegal - it's literally the purpose the exception to the 13th was for.

It caused a bit of an uproar during the primaries and the 2016 campaign. And fair enough, it's pretty appalling as a tradition. But I doubt it's actually stopped, it was just used as another Hillary talking point, rather than something that needed to be fixed.

 

[bpontius]

Seeing the word "slave" I immediately know a lot about that code, while follower tells me almost nothing. With the latter in terms of the language I would have to be familiar with both the leader and follower classes. It's essentially obfuscating the meaning of the code.

No, you assume a lot, but implementation may not follow your assumption and then you're just wrong.

You need a word for a task that will do precisely what you code it to, with no authority over other processes and which can be left to continue that task eternally with zero supervision. The word "slave" meets only one of those criteria. A better word may be "golem." Even "robot" translates back to "slave."

"Slave" is just an incorrect description, and that's before you get to the societal implications of using the word.

 

[Steve65]

Oh jesus fuck, it's like people have never heard of context before.

God forbid they ever watch Blazing Saddles, liberal heads are going to fucking explode.

People do not come any more socially liberal than me, and I think Blazing Saddles is the funniest movie ever made.

Your inability to understand that tells me you most likely didn't understand the movie either.

 

[Steve65]

poutrage

That is the awesomest portmanteau I've ever seen, and I'm going to retain it for future use...

 

[ApplePaladin]

Oh jesus fuck, it's like people have never heard of context before.

God forbid they ever watch Blazing Saddles, liberal heads are going to fucking explode.

People do not come any more socially liberal than me, and I think Blazing Saddles is the funniest movie ever made.

Your inability to understand that tells me you most likely didn't understand the movie either.

Blazing Saddles is a bit of a mixed bag. There are some parts that haven't exactly aged well. For the most part I still find it hilarious, but the homophobic bits aren't exactly endearing.

 

[trenzterra]

I've got nothing against dropping "master/slave". But now is the next target "male/female" connectors because there isn't a third choice? Or is just "male/female" somehow sexist on its own?

I'd entertain suggestions on new gender-less terminologically for connectors.

Sure, I'm a little out there on this - but you have to admit it could come to this.

Penetrator/Receptacle?

"Hi I'm after a cable for my TV, Penetrator to Receptacle please"

penetrator and penetratee?

 

[Steve65]

Oh jesus fuck, it's like people have never heard of context before.

God forbid they ever watch Blazing Saddles, liberal heads are going to fucking explode.

People do not come any more socially liberal than me, and I think Blazing Saddles is the funniest movie ever made.

Your inability to understand that tells me you most likely didn't understand the movie either.

Blazing Saddles is a bit of a mixed bag. There are some parts that haven't exactly aged well. For the most part I still find it hilarious, but the homophobic bits aren't exactly endearing.

It's been a while, so I've probably blocked those bits from memory.

And even when I was a 12 year old boy I didn't find fart jokes funny, so that part I generally skip past.

The new sheriff is near...

 

[Sunnyape]

"Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it"

Getting closer every day.

Replacing racist terminology with better terminology that's not steeped in racism makes it harder for you to think? Nice.

"The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible."

 

[graylshaped]

Oh jesus fuck, it's like people have never heard of context before.

God forbid they ever watch Blazing Saddles, liberal heads are going to fucking explode.

People do not come any more socially liberal than me, and I think Blazing Saddles is the funniest movie ever made.

Your inability to understand that tells me you most likely didn't understand the movie either.

Blazing Saddles is a bit of a mixed bag. There are some parts that haven't exactly aged well. For the most part I still find it hilarious, but the homophobic bits aren't exactly endearing.

I watched it a few months ago, and other than the bit at the end where it broke the fourth wall, are there homophobic elements I missed? "Kansas City faggots," I will grant you.

This movie was targeted directly by a Jewish director as a satire on racism.

 

[graylshaped]

Former President Clinton and his wife had house slaves when he was Governor of Arkansas.

I would appreciate a little expansion on this and maybe a link. From the context I assume this expands to "prisoners from the nearest penitentiary were put on work furlough to be butlers / maids / whatever" ?

Take the first initial of Sean, then add his other appended initials, and realize this is Yet Another Example of trolls just playing with you.

 

[Noty661]

As a kid in the 90's - when we had to set master/slave jumpers when replacing hard disks - I recall thinking the master/slave terminology was oddly insulting and a strange choice given our history.

 

[BloodNinja]

Personally, I think master / slave more accurately expresses the intent of the code. All of the new terms are less clear and concise.

TIL in zfs one of the nodes beats on and abuses the other nodes

also that node stands around does no work and gets all the benefit from the node actually doing the work.

That node can also sell the lesser node for cash money, or shoot it if it tries to run away.

Or molest it and spawn new nodes which can be sold for money?

You're thinking of Hadoop.

 

[SeanJW]

Former President Clinton and his wife had house slaves when he was Governor of Arkansas.

I would appreciate a little expansion on this and maybe a link. From the context I assume this expands to "prisoners from the nearest penitentiary were put on work furlough to be butlers / maids / whatever" ?

Take the first initial of Sean, then add his other appended initials, and realize this is Yet Another Example of trolls just playing with you.

it's not an attack on the Clintons specifically, or anyone in particular - or even the US. It's just a highlight that slavery is still real and very much present in even "slave free" nations. Australia 'banned' slaves in 1807 along with the rest of the British Empire, and still had government inquiries in to slavery of the First Nations up until the end of the 20th century.... 200 years later *after* it was "illegal"

To fix that quirk in the US would take a constitutional amendment - no single politician is going to fix that.

So yeah, it's not just "this happened, so people are touchy about it" ... it's "this happens *still*, so people are touchy about it". And if people want to brush off why people are touchy about the word slave, well, they're still part of the problem.

(I nearly used generic "you", but I know perfectly well you're on the side of angels in this, as is Jim and most people who comment regularly on Ars)

 

[SeanJW]

Oh, and to put my stance in simple words. If you're against this change by the OpenZFS developers, fuck you. I've been a programmer and sysadmin for nearly 40 years, I've worked for everything from borderline criminal organisations to Google. My biggest point of professional pride is working for a university, and being a small part of a machine to help people improve themselves. And that's the point.

I've got a small code base *noone* will see. It's used on my own servers, and only one person even has access, and she's never looked, because it's in case I get hit by a bus. Noone will judge me on it, noone will care.

I still went through my code base and cleaned up things like this, because it made my code better and more accurate in descriptions, and it's part of making *me* a better person to respect others. You learn, you improve, you grow.

That's what you're supposed to do right up until you die.

 

[crowley95]

Not once have I ever thought about "blacklist" or "whitelist" having any racial overtones. To me those are mostly technical terms that conjure up a very specific meaning, that has nothing to do with humans or race. Looking up the etymology, even at the start it didn't have racial overtones. It likely comes from Henry VIII's book of sinful people, and the cover was just plain black so it got called "the black book". Which eventually spawned "black lists" and then "white lists"

Changing terminology to something more accurate is one thing. But changing it to something less specific just because someone somewhere might reaaaaally stretch things to take offense? No thanks. In the words of Steve Hughes, "nothing happens when you're offended". If you're working that hard to be offended, I'll leave you to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Words are just noises that convey a meaning. We shouldn't take offense at the noise, only the meaning.

Blocklist/Allowlist is more technically descriptive.

Blocklisted, allowlisted, non-allowlisted. Those work.

 

[Kaczor47]

I am absolutely dismayed at some of the comments here.

Context matters. For example: saying 'All Lives Matter' at a Black Lives Matter protest is completely different to saying the exact same words to your 95 year old grandmother who, by virtue of growing up at a different time, holds views that are by today's standards, regarded as racist. In the first instance, it is dismissive of an important cause. In the latter, it is a pointing out to that her views on people of colour are outdated.

Context DOES matter. Period.

 

[SixDegrees]

I am absolutely dismayed at some of the comments here.

Context matters. For example: saying 'All Lives Matter' at a Black Lives Matter protest is completely different to saying the exact same words to your 95 year old grandmother who, by virtue of growing up at a different time, holds views that are by today's standards, regarded as racist. In the first instance, it is dismissive of an important cause. In the latter, it is a pointing out to that her views on people of colour are outdated.

Context DOES matter. Period.

The article discusses the context of this particular decision in depth. It's an entirely appropriate change.

 

[marsilies]

it's not an attack on the Clintons specifically, or anyone in particular - or even the US. It's just a highlight that slavery is still real and very much present in even "slave free" nations. Australia 'banned' slaves in 1807 along with the rest of the British Empire, and still had government inquiries in to slavery of the First Nations up until the end of the 20th century.... 200 years later *after* it was "illegal"

Newsflash: some people still do things even after the government makes it illegal.

As for the forced labor of prisoners, one can debate whether that should be allowed or not, but that's not, in the strictest technical terms, slavery. The prisoners aren't "owned" by anyone, and the labor is part of the punishment for the crime they were convicted of. I think a documentary like 13th can show how there's failings in our criminal justice system that were deliberately established to continue to persecute and dehumanize African Americans disproportionately, but phrases like "The Clintons had house slaves" just comes off as unnecessary hysterical hyperbole.

I mean, are people ordered to perform community service slaves? They're being forced to do a certain type of labor, yes?

 

[nivedita]

Not once have I ever thought about "blacklist" or "whitelist" having any racial overtones. To me those are mostly technical terms that conjure up a very specific meaning, that has nothing to do with humans or race. Looking up the etymology, even at the start it didn't have racial overtones. It likely comes from Henry VIII's book of sinful people, and the cover was just plain black so it got called "the black book". Which eventually spawned "black lists" and then "white lists"

Changing terminology to something more accurate is one thing. But changing it to something less specific just because someone somewhere might reaaaaally stretch things to take offense? No thanks. In the words of Steve Hughes, "nothing happens when you're offended". If you're working that hard to be offended, I'll leave you to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Words are just noises that convey a meaning. We shouldn't take offense at the noise, only the meaning.

When it comes to colours, we should remember that the association of black with negative things, like death for example, is not universal. In some Asian cultures, white is the colour associated with death and mourning, for example. I guess "white book" or "white listing" over there could have a very different meaning.

I don't think whitelisting would be misinterpreted, but, yes, it's always a little unsettling to see a bride dressed in white.

 

[nivedita]

Master/slave implies that the slave configuration has zero autonomy. If the master configuration fails, then it all falls apart.

For example, the IDE hard drive configuration. Parent/child isn’t precise enough. Nor is primary/secondary (this one, in fact, would be inaccurate).

If what you're going for is "falls apart if the master dies", master/slave isn't even an appropriate term. If the master dies, then the slave is free, and can do whatever it wants.

You need something that matches the analogy. Like truck/trailer. Something where the secondary is truly useless without the primary.

It's hilarious that he's using this in the context of IDE drives. The old "master/slave setting" there is simply a 1-bit address, to allow them to use the same cable without stomping over each other. There is no relationship at all between the drives otherwise.

 

[nivedita]

"Less photons" is not black. And you're assuming that there's no other source of photons anywhere. You can keep torturing the metaphor until it's paste, "physics" does not explain the meaning of a blacklist.

Less photons arriving to the observer is the very definition of black eg: lack of light
(depending on the level and range of loss of course).
I do not torture it you are!

Not in physics it isn't. "Black" in physics means "absorbs all incident radiation". Something that's black according to the physics definition can be red, yellow, white, blue etc to a layman, depending on its temperature.

 

[numerobis]

"Less photons" is not black. And you're assuming that there's no other source of photons anywhere. You can keep torturing the metaphor until it's paste, "physics" does not explain the meaning of a blacklist.

Less photons arriving to the observer is the very definition of black eg: lack of light
(depending on the level and range of loss of course).
I do not torture it you are!

Not in physics it isn't. "Black" in physics means "absorbs all incident radiation". Something that's black according to the physics definition can be red, yellow, white, blue etc to a layman, depending on its temperature.

People make cheap blackout curtains in the Arctic this time of year using aluminium foil. Which is about as not black as you can get.

 

[nivedita]

A maxim of a successful project or product is that it’s taken, modified, and used in ways that the designers never intended.

This ONLY gets attention once it’s broken, because these changes are often hacks that are done once and forgotten to solve a very specific problem.


Are the chances of this very high? Probably not, but it’s not something I would discount lightly or at all.

Me neither. Neither do the OpenZFS developers, which is why (again) their pull requests differentiate minor code cleanup and the like which this was marked under) with breaking changes (which this was not marked under). I've already explained this to you several times now, and I also pointed out that those kinds of minor changes are regularly made in software - on every successful project - without some arbitrary sunsetting process being applied.

Please either respond to the points I'm making instead of wasting my time like this. The arguments you're making here are facially absurd when applied to other, similarly minor code changes, so you need to do more than just restate them and you especially need to do better than grandstanding about "successful projects" when you're talking about something as large and well-established as OpenZFS.

I already answered you.

Your argument reduces down to: The OpenZFS developers know best whether this is likely to be a breaking change.

Which is true but also not enough.

I’ve made script and configuration hacks on my own Ubuntu setup, for example, which worked for several releases until one update would break things miserably

The pull list includes a filename which has changed. So on a default configuration this is safe.

I think what you’re saying is that the kind of hackery I’m pointing out either is rare; or it’s something that shouldn’t be done and so can be ignored.

Would you agree with that assessment?

My argument doesn't reduce down to that, no. My argument includes that, but also provides a clear explanation of how and why minor changes like this are made all the time and arbitrarily without people like you insisting that we slow the process with a two year sunsetting procedure.

You're reducing my argument to only that one point because it makes it an easier target, and you're refusing to acknowledge most of the actual points I'm making.

You're still wasting my time, and you've done nothing in this thread except waste other peoples' time and then chastise them for calling you on it, so I'm done with you.

I don't even see why this is relevant at all. This is a change made to OpenZFS by the OpenZFS community, hell, by one of the original authors of ZFS. It doesn't matter even if it immediately broke every OpenZFS installation out there: like all open source software, it comes with NO warranty. It's none of @ralphnobody's business to tell the OpenZFS project how it should be run.

 

[Basil Forthrightly]

But he heard it was nobody’s business...

 

[Arkleseizure]

"Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it"

Getting closer every day.

If anything, renaming something from Slave to Dependent is more accurate and widens the field of language.

You're on the wrong side of this.
You're helping to silence voices that haven't been heard properly for too long.

And honestly, if you're thinking of making someone a slave, then I'd happily lock you up for thoughtcrime. And if there were no word for slave the world might be in a damn better shape now.

There's no bad side to this, other than people being butthurt because things are changing to make someone else's life possibly a little less shitty.

 

[Arkleseizure]

To all the folks who are upset over some minor word changes, film casting or TV shows getting pulled.

Think how upset you are over one or two things that aren't going exactly how you'd like them.

Now imagine that happened every single day of your life. That would suck balls, right? Every day or two there was another small irksome thing, sometimes a huge thing.

But it also happened to your parents, and their parents and their parents....

 

[SomeGuy123456]

I can understand the logic of replacing master/slave, the thing that really blows my mind is the move to replace the 'master' branch in git with 'main'. Because there is no corresponding notion of 'slave' in git, it's master as in 'master copy'. It seems like the reasoning is: this string of letters is bad, let's find/replace every instance of it everywhere indiscriminately, à la S****horpe.

I've never liked the terminology of 'master' in git; it implies a hierarchy that doesn't exist. 'main' is a little better, though still imperfect.

Mercurial just uses 'default', but that said, there are plenty of uses of master that have nothing to do with slaves or even controlling. For instance, you can have a master recording, which is just the recording that copies are taken from.

 

[numerobis]

I can understand the logic of replacing master/slave, the thing that really blows my mind is the move to replace the 'master' branch in git with 'main'. Because there is no corresponding notion of 'slave' in git, it's master as in 'master copy'. It seems like the reasoning is: this string of letters is bad, let's find/replace every instance of it everywhere indiscriminately, à la S****horpe.

I've never liked the terminology of 'master' in git; it implies a hierarchy that doesn't exist. 'main' is a little better, though still imperfect.

Mercurial just uses 'default', but that said, there are plenty of uses of master that have nothing to do with slaves or even controlling. For instance, you can have a master recording, which is just the recording that copies are taken from.

That one is from master/slave. To make copies you put the master in the master tape deck and you put the blank in the slave deck.

Master's degrees and mastery of a skill are not at all about slavery.

 

[Jim Salter]

Former President Clinton and his wife had house slaves when he was Governor of Arkansas.

I would appreciate a little expansion on this and maybe a link. From the context I assume this expands to "prisoners from the nearest penitentiary were put on work furlough to be butlers / maids / whatever" ?

The "prison inmates" are working at the governer's mansion by long tradition; they're also not paid.

That's apparently true of prison labour in several states.

Slavery/involuntary servitude is still on the cards if you're a prisoner.

I'm not disagreeing with the premise; just wanted to make sure I was on the right page.