netdev - [RFC] bonding driver terminology change proposal

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Date:   Mon, 13 Jul 2020 14:51:39 -0400
From:   Jarod Wilson <jarod@...hat.com>
To:     Netdev <netdev@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: [RFC] bonding driver terminology change proposal

As part of an effort to help enact social change, Red Hat is
committing to efforts to eliminate any problematic terminology from
any of the software that it ships and supports. Front and center for
me personally in that effort is the bonding driver's use of the terms
master and slave, and to a lesser extent, bond and bonding, due to
bondage being another term for slavery. Most people in computer
science understand these terms aren't intended to be offensive or
oppressive, and have well understood meanings in computing, but
nonetheless, they still present an open wound, and a barrier for
participation and inclusion to some.

To start out with, I'd like to attempt to eliminate as much of the use
of master and slave in the bonding driver as possible. For the most
part, I think this can be done without breaking UAPI, but may require
changes to anything accessing bond info via proc or sysfs.

My initial thought was to rename master to aggregator and slaves to
ports, but... that gets really messy with the existing 802.3ad bonding
code using both extensively already. I've given thought to a number of
other possible combinations, but the one that I'm liking the most is
master -> bundle and slave -> cable, for a number of reasons. I'd
considered cable and wire, as a cable is a grouping of individual
wires, but we're grouping together cables, really -- each bonded
ethernet interface has a cable connected, so a bundle of cables makes
sense visually and figuratively. Additionally, it's a swap made easier
in the codebase by master and bundle and slave and cable having the
same number of characters, respectively. Granted though, "bundle"
doesn't suggest "runs the show" the way "master" or something like
maybe "director" or "parent" does, but those lack the visual aspect
present with a bundle of cables. Using parent/child could work too
though, it's perhaps closer to the master/slave terminology currently
in use as far as literal meaning.

So... Thoughts?

For reference, a work-in-progress adaptation from master/slave to
bundle/cable has a diffstat that is currently summarized as:

 37 files changed, 2607 insertions(+), 2571 deletions(-)

-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod@...hat.com