netdev - Re: [RFC] bonding driver terminology change proposal

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Date:   Tue, 14 Jul 2020 14:01:07 -0400
From:   Jarod Wilson <jarod@...hat.com>
To:     Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@...il.com>
Cc:     Netdev <netdev@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [RFC] bonding driver terminology change proposal

On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 5:36 PM Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@...il.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/13/20 11:51 AM, Jarod Wilson wrote:
> > 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?
> >
>
> So you considered : aggregator/ports, bundle/cable.
>
> I thought about cord/strand, since this is less likely to be used already in networking land
> (like worker, thread, fiber, or wire ...)
>
> Although a cord with two strands is probably not very common :/

I'd also thought about cable and wire, since there are multiple
physical wires inside an ethernet cable, but you typically connect one
cable per port, so a bundle of cables seemed to make more sense. :) I
also had a few other ideas I played with, including a bundle of pipes
and a pipework of pipes (which is apparently a thing, but not very
common either, outside of maybe plumbers?).

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