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

[Tristan Van Berkom <tristan vanberkom codethink co uk>]

Hi Matthias,

I am replying to your post because I think it is masterfully written
and agree with it.

That said, the opinions expressed here are my own, I urge people to
not confuse my own arguments with Matthias's, and consider
these separately.

On Fri, 2019-04-26 at 19:11 +0200, Matthias Klumpp wrote:
> > Am Fr., 26. Apr. 2019 um 18:12 Uhr schrieb <mcatanzaro gnome org>:
> > I'm a little surprised that nobody has yet mentioned the elephant in
> > the room. The definition of "git" is not very inclusive:
> >
> > [...]
>
> I really did not want to comment on this thread initially, but I would
> like to add a thought to this afterall:

Likewise (I also changed my mind).

I think that there are political pressures revolving around this topic
which prevent people from speaking their mind clearly, and I worry that
simply by not speaking up against this change we allow such pressures
to rise to a point where nobody feels free to speak their mind.

I think our priority at the community level has to be that we are open,
transparent and inclusive - while this proposal itself aims to improve
inclusiveness, it does not in my opinion achieve this goal.

Instead, by opening the door to censorship of words which are not
themselves inherently vulgar or foul (i.e. 'master' is not considered a
'swear word'), we are creating an atmosphere where people worry more
and more whether they can express themselves freely.

I don't want to be counted among those who stood silently by and
allowed our community to degenerate into a place that is not inclusive.

I do not want this community to entertain or endorse the notion that
people have any inherent right to not ever be offended either - a base
requirement for communications at this international level is that we
always take the context in which words are used into consideration and
always assume the best intentions: we should not allow ourselves to be
"triggered" simply by a word we do not like.

We should also not show favoritism of one set of cultural values over
another, I feel that censorship to this degree is a very western
concept which we should not lend any credit to. Ask has already pointed
out that the possible offensiveness of the word 'master' on it's own is
even more particular to the USA, I cannot speak to the veracity of this
but I do suspect that this is pandering specifically to US
sensitivities, which I also do not agree with.

As such, I clearly express my opposition to this proposal.

Best,
    -Tristan

PS:

I should point out that I think the subject line here is misleading: It
purports to remove references to "master/slave" relationships in GNOME
modules (this would be a proposal I could get behind honestly).

However, the proposal goes on to propose eliminating all uses of the
word "master" (as in git master, as in the 'master copy') regardless of
whether it is used in context of being in relation to a slave
component.

Proposing that we replace references to master/slave relationships with
other terminology and proposing that we eliminate the usage of both
words entirely are two entirely different proposals, this is a proposal
of the latter which appears to be masquerading as the former.