Following GitHub and Twitter, the Linux Kernel Abolishes Master/slave
On July 10 (last Friday), Linus Torvalds, the father of Linux and chief engineer of the Linux kernel, merged a Pull Request in the Linux 5.8 version library.
In the Linux kernel code and documentation, neutral terms (inclusive language) will replace master/slave and blacklist/whitelist.
This PR was submitted by Linux kernel developer Dan Williams on July 4.He is also a member of the Linux Foundation's Technical Advisory Committee and has published many articles related to Linux development.
Williams pointed out that the Linux kernel is a global software project. At present, many countries have launched racist movements. The historical African slave trade has also brought great suffering to the African people. In order to show respect for developers of different races, the technology community should adopt more inclusive language.
Replacement sequelae: too many new terms and lack of unified standards
Going forward, Linux developers will need to use new terminology to replace master/slave and blacklist/whitelist.
Alternative terms for master/slave include:
primary/secondary
primary/replica or subordinate
initiator/target
requester/responder
controller/device
host/worker or proxy
leader/follower
director/performer
Proposed alternative terms for blacklist/whitelist include:
denylist/allowlist
blocklist/passlist
It is worth mentioning thatThe Linux team does not recommend exact replacement terms and instead encourages developers to make their own choices.
According to official news, new terms need to be used in new codes and related documents of the Linux kernel; master/slave and blacklist/whitelist are still required to maintain old codes and old documents, or when certain hardware or protocol specifications have clear requirements.
"Technological political correctness" sweeps the tech world
Since the George Floyd incident in Minnesota, the United States at the end of May, protests have been held in nearly 100 cities across the United States. After the equal rights movement hit the technology circle,Many technology companies also stood up at the first opportunity and expressed their intention to abolish racist terms such as "blacklist".
Companies and open source communities supporting this name change movement include Twitter, GitHub, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Ansible, Splunk, Android, Go, MySQL, PHPUnit, Curl, OpenZFS, Rust, JP Morgan, etc., and now the Linux kernel has become one of them.
Many people in the academic community support the name change.It is believed that the continued use of racially charged words will deepen and prolong racial discrimination.
On the contrary, some people in the technology industry hold the opposite view.
What a pointless waste of time, I've been doing development for over a decade and not once did I think about black history when merging code into master.
I don't know where slave, blacklist, and whitelist come from, and I won't bother with it.
It's really ironic that this PR requesting the deprecation of master/slave was eventually merged into master.
We have "Racial equality movement accelerates Github, Go abolishes Blacklist naming, is technology politically correct?"In the article, a vote was initiated to change the name, and friends were asked for their opinions on the name change. The results are as follows:
What do you think about the deprecation of master/slave and blacklist/whitelist that has swept the technology circle and the impact it brings?
Welcome to communicate with us.
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