Yes, it started from this terminology change at Twitter in 2020. They’re the reason that version control systems call the primary branch ‘main’ instead of ‘master’ by default, because ‘master’ comes from the master/slave terminology that is used in electronics hardware design.
There’s a comment here saying that master/slave in hardware design is being replaced by primary/secondary because of the software trend, which I think is stupid. Master/slave works much better in that context because the master device controls the slave device. Primary/secondary implies that the slave device is a fallback of the master device.
A lot of companies seem to be doing this, personally I think trying to make a connection between race and tech is a bit far fetched. Nobody thinks of race when talking about whitelists and blacklists…
In public repos where these changes are merged in to FOSS projects, they get little resistance too - although I could see concern of a potential backlash if anyone questioned the alleged benefit of such a change.
Imagine if this approach was taken with the (now outdated) IDE interface? Instead of “Primary Master, Primary Slave, Secondary Master, Secondary Slave”, there’d maybe be “Primary Primary, Primary Secondary, Secondary Primary, Secondary Secondary” 😵
The best reasoning I saw for this change was for clarity for non native English speakers. If you’re learning the language “allowlist” is definitely more clear in meaning than “whitelist”
I do think dropping master is absurd, since it in no way implies slavery or any such thing. mastermostly has uses that are entirely inoffensive, unless post-graduate degrees are racist, for example.
But I do think there is some merit in moving off the idea of white is good and black is bad. There are some good arguments that we shouldn’t bestow magic powers upon words, but there is also a lot of merit in the idea that these words affect our perception in negative ways and there is really nothing lost by shifting to equally good alternatives.
Not the main point, but this is the first time I’ve seen “allowlisted”. Lol
…are they trying to avoid saying whitelisted because of the word “white”?
Yes, it started from this terminology change at Twitter in 2020. They’re the reason that version control systems call the primary branch ‘main’ instead of ‘master’ by default, because ‘master’ comes from the master/slave terminology that is used in electronics hardware design.
There’s a comment here saying that master/slave in hardware design is being replaced by primary/secondary because of the software trend, which I think is stupid. Master/slave works much better in that context because the master device controls the slave device. Primary/secondary implies that the slave device is a fallback of the master device.
Yeah, at my company we switched to allow/block listed last year. Whitelisted and blacklisted are verboten
A lot of companies seem to be doing this, personally I think trying to make a connection between race and tech is a bit far fetched. Nobody thinks of race when talking about whitelists and blacklists…
In public repos where these changes are merged in to FOSS projects, they get little resistance too - although I could see concern of a potential backlash if anyone questioned the alleged benefit of such a change.
Imagine if this approach was taken with the (now outdated) IDE interface? Instead of “Primary Master, Primary Slave, Secondary Master, Secondary Slave”, there’d maybe be “Primary Primary, Primary Secondary, Secondary Primary, Secondary Secondary” 😵
kill all children
Hasn’t Kubernetes already replaced master-slave with master/manager-worker? Seems like there are plenty of alternatives.
Manager-worker seems classist and problematic /s
The best reasoning I saw for this change was for clarity for non native English speakers. If you’re learning the language “allowlist” is definitely more clear in meaning than “whitelist”
Just like “master” in git. WTH is wrong with it. I feed “master” as “the master of kung-fu” is much better then “main”.
I do think dropping
masteris absurd, since it in no way implies slavery or any such thing.mastermostly has uses that are entirely inoffensive, unless post-graduate degrees are racist, for example.But I do think there is some merit in moving off the idea of white is good and black is bad. There are some good arguments that we shouldn’t bestow magic powers upon words, but there is also a lot of merit in the idea that these words affect our perception in negative ways and there is really nothing lost by shifting to equally good alternatives.
The idea of “black list” has nothing to do with black people, to my understending
That’s not the issue. The issue is inherently seeing white as meaning good and black as meaning bad.
This has absolutely nothing to do with racial features.