linux-kernel - Re: [Tech-board-discuss] [PATCH] CodingStyle: Inclusive Terminology

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Message-ID: <4592008a-16ee-d8c4-4ec3-5e36a268e5d6@gmail.com>
Date:   Tue, 7 Jul 2020 02:03:36 +0300
From:   Pavel Begunkov <asml.silence@...il.com>
To:     Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org>
Cc:     Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@...el.com>,
        ksummit-discuss@...ts.linuxfoundation.org,
        Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        tech-board-discuss@...ts.linuxfoundation.org,
        torvalds@...ux-foundation.org
Subject: Re: [Tech-board-discuss] [PATCH] CodingStyle: Inclusive Terminology

On 07/07/2020 01:28, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> On Tue, 7 Jul 2020 01:17:47 +0300
> Pavel Begunkov <asml.silence@...il.com> wrote:
> 
>> Totally agree with you! But do we care then whether two _devices_ or _objects_
>> are slave-master? Can't see how it fundamentally differs.
> 
> The term slave carries a lot more meaning than subordinate. I replied to
> someone else but later realized that the person sent me their reply
> offlist, so my reply to them was also offlist. What I told them was,
> back in college (decades ago), when I first mentioned "master/slave" in
> conversation (I think it was about hard drives), a person in that
> conversation stated that those were not very nice terms to use. I blew
> it off back then, but after listening to more people, I found that
> using "slave" even to describe a device is not something that people
> care to hear about.

That's cultural, but honestly I've never seen such a person. I still
don't understand, why having secondary or subordinate object belittling
the owned side by not providing it the same rights and freedom is OK,
but slave/master objects are not. Where is the line?


> 
> And in actuality, does one device actually enslave another device? I
> think that terminology is misleading to begin with.

As mentioned, I do like good clear terminology, and if it conveys the idea
better, etc., then it's worth to try. And IMHO that's the right reasoning
that should be behind. Otherwise, for almost every word we can find a person
seeing something subjectively offensive or at least bad in it.

-- 
Pavel Begunkov