Linux Kernel Preparing New Guidelines For Using Inclusive Terminology

[halo9en]

Yeah what's next? Rename the "kill" program to "terminate" because some crazy people think "kill" involves death, crime or murder?

Twitter is doing the same: https://twitter.com/TwitterEng/statu...33305190342656

I can only imagine how these idiotic SJWs have to feel about technical terminology.

[coder]

So odd to see police shootings in the U.S. and the resultant furor characterized as "a global reckoning"; does anyone have insight what makes this a global reckoning?

There have been protests in most countries, by this point. Not so much about what's happening in the US, but if you take the example of Australia, they've largely been protesting discrimination and oppression of Aboriginal people.

Most countries have racial minorities, and it seems many of them have been inspired and encouraged by recent protests they've seen in the US and elsewhere.

From what I've heard and read, it seems this change would be more accurately characterized as #include <us_cultural_baggage.h>

It's not as if the kernel was free of cultural baggage, to begin with. If you take the example of master/slave, where do you think that came from? It's a metaphor that could've hearkened back to ancient Rome or ancient Egypt, but it came from somewhere and it's interpreted within the context of the reader. I might think of ancient Roman masters and slaves, but it might conjure images of antebellum plantations, for another. I can't say they're wrong to think so.

Any large project is not going to exist in complete isolation from the broader culture. It's just a practical reality. There was cultural baggage already in there, and as the culture changes, it's going to have ripples that touch the organizations within it and the works they produce.

You guys can rail against this all you want, but it's probably worth asking yourself why you care about it so deeply. Are you so tied to the existing cultural baggage, in the kernel? If you really just care about the software and its underlying merits, then why is this such an issue for you?

I'm not the type who would lead this sort of effort, but I can understand and sympathize where it's coming from. Truth be told, I remember the original move by the State of California to ban master/slave nomenclature, and I thought it was a bit silly and ignorant. I've come to be a bit more sympathetic, and to see that there's no real downside to adapting. It's not going to make the software any worse. Sure, it costs a little time and energy, but these sorts of overheads are a fact of life, in large, long-lived projects. So, if it's a big deal for others, I'd go along with it. They're really not asking much.

[Volta]

I know, but sadly the rest of the ecosystem is doing roughly the same thing.

Haven't you seen how many projects adopted that horrible CoC?

The question is who is responsible for such stupidity? My bet are foundations and corporate monkeys.

[oleid]

It’s yet another attempt at a marxist revolution in America.

Oh, you mean like the communist Healthcare stuff Obama tried to implement? Good thing the lord savior himself corrected that error.

Healthcare for everyone? When would you ever need that?


Sent from my Sailfish phone from Europe.

[coder]

For my view on racism in France, my father is born in Morocco and my own skin color is not white, so I am myself part of a so-called "racial minority"

Thanks for clarifying. I apologize for assuming otherwise.

having a "blacklist" is NOT racism.

I accept that it's not, but do you think it's misplaced concern that it sounds like it might be?

what I criticize is some ideas, originating from some intellectuals, mostly not actual racism victims, like changing engineering terms, that are just ridiculous

To be honest, I don't know specifically who is pushing for the changes. I agree that it doesn't solve the deeper problems of racism and discrimination, but I also wouldn't mind being accommodating, if someone cares deeply about the matter. The kernel undergoes various housekeeping, for all sorts of reasons. I really think this isn't so different or such a big deal.

[ssokolow]

You know there isn't any REAL problem with "whitelist/blacklist" at all, right?
Those are about light! Like a bright light being a good path and a dark corridor being evil. Is it that hard to understand?

There is NO freaking skin color or race involved when we say "whitelist/blacklist".



...ugh, I'm not talking to you anymore. I won't talk to CoC (corru-*cough*) supporters.

...not to mention that it's just another step on the euphemism treadmill. Thinking that there's a way to craft language that can only be used "correctly" is doubleplus ungood.

I also like this reply to Twitter's inclusive language push:

As a 56 year old veteran who suffers from erectile dysfunction I would like you to avoid using the non-inclusive term "hard-coded" and replace it with "we can do hand stuff or you can go down on me I guess it's no big deal it happens to lots of guys-coded."
-- https://twitter.com/AshJWilliamson/s...83049863569411

[cynical]

Healthcare for everyone? When would you ever need that?

If there is one constant in the universe that you can rely on, it is the obsession that Europeans have with their healthcare.

[coder]

BLM has nothing to do with black people in particular. It could be called “cat lives matter” and serve the same purpose (making people afraid of opposing it)

It’s yet another attempt at a marxist revolution in America. They want to control your words, your history, everything. The country is fundamentally evil and irredeemable in their eyes, so they want to scrap it and make a new one in their own vision.

Say goodbye to the Constitution if they get their way. It was written by flawed individuals and therefore the principles are invalid.

The funny thing is you only ever hear about this stuff every four years. Blacks are unfortunately treated as political pawns and manipulated towards nefarious ends. People are becoming wise to it though.

Well, you're sure living up to your username.

We can't say there's absolutely no one who feels that way, but you can't credibly take those extreme and distorted views and cast them onto such a mass movement. I mean, this sort of polemic would almost make a State-backed troll blush.

The vast majority of people marching and protesting want what they say they want:

• accountability for police
• police reform
• reallocation of resources to create opportunities for blacks

That's it. Nothing like that BS about the Constitution or whatever other propaganda you're trying to peddle.

It's even a small minority who are pulling down & defacing statues and monuments. Reasonable people can disagree about which statues and monuments should be kept and why, but my own view is that some are getting carried away by the moment and going a little overboard with that whole business. But that's somewhat of a logical consequence of Confederate statues being erected and kept for so long--it shouldn't be surprising if the pendulum swings a little too far the other way. Unfortunate, but unsurprising.

[_Alex_]

If someone doesn't understand that in the context of software, the master/slave notion has no racism extensions, I mean wtf.

Next thing you know, ordinary phrases might be considered ...repurposed to "trigger" some sjw types, and then you have perfectly legit symbolism and words being removed.

For example the OK symbol, just got ...removed from a game because, well, some people were said to be using it for ...white supremacy.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/...ture-call-duty

The rationale used (that the OK symbol was used by some white supremacist) is an exploitable attack vector to change everything. If a fake radical ideologist uses any type of word or gesture to promote their cause, then what? That word or gesture should be culturally expunged?

Also related with the kernel renaming: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/...and-he-him-his

"dummy values", "sanity check" etc seem "problematic"...

[ALRBP]

I accept that it's not, but do you think it's misplaced concern that it sounds like it might be?

I think that this terminology is definitely not racist and I have never though it could be interpreted this way before today. If we want to fight racism effectively, we need look for real racism (there is a lot), identify real racist people and send them to jail, not search for anything that could be interpreted in a racist way, even though it's not actual racism. When in our countries (in France as in the US) racist people are still free to attack minorities, have explicitly racist legal political organizations and do their racist propaganda on TV, we need to fight against we. I want government to ban racist organizations (USA still have a Nazi Party and in France, we have neo-nazi organizations called "Identitaires"), arrest their members and forbid racist talks on TV, not change engineering terminology. Asking for this kind of changes just makes it easy for racist people to criticize anti-racist activist and convince moderate people that anti-racism is bad. This is counterproductive because we need to convince moderate people that racist organizations, which threatens minorities lives, should be banned, which we can not do without a political majority, this is what is really important.