Re: Proposal: Replace all references to master/slave in GNOME modules

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

On Thu, 2019-04-25 at 11:58 +0200, David Woodhouse wrote:
> On Thu, 2019-04-25 at 11:45 +0200, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> > You also don't get to call reasoning you don't agree with "bizarre
> > and
> > illogical" without justifying it. The reason behind this possible
> > change was already mentioned in the original mail. The mail's hard
> > to
> > read, but fairly short, and clearly shows that this isn't about
> > twisting words.
>
> I read the email. It said it was about removing references to the
> terms
> "master" and "slave".

Yes, both separately. It then mentions "social inclusiveness" and not
just slavery as the topic, and links to a set of guidelines for which
the URL makes it clear that it's not about slavery either:
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mjw/Language/NonSexist/vuw.non-sexist-language-guidelines.txt

> But then went on to advocate removing a different word which just
> happens to be a homonym for one of the above. Which is why I called
> it
> bizarre and illogical.
>
> Even if we accept the initial premise that history can be fixed by
> whitewashing it and never speaking of it again and never even using
> terms that can accidentally *remind* people of it... extending it to
> homonyms makes no sense at all.

It's easier to completely remove "master" to remove mentions of
"master/slave" and to remove the non-gender neutral "master" than it
would be to do half of that. Two birds, one stone.