Linux Kernel Preparing New Guidelines For Using Inclusive Terminology

[ssokolow]

Dueling needs to be legalized again. So all who feel offended can gun down offenders or be gunned down. Or shut up out of fear.
Either way, this shit is going to end then sooner or later.

Only if it's legalized in a way where there's no penalty for a sane person who has better things to do than learn to use a gun to refuse to duel a crazy gun nut.

Otherwise, you might as well argue that it should be illegal to resolve disputes through any means other than interpretive dance or C++ programming or some other specialized skill.

[timrichardson]

People mostly argue about this change being useless, or that there're more important thing to do...

But isn't the entire initiative actually harmful?
For me it seems that banning any usual words only makes things worse.

We're supposed to make world a better place, right?

But declaring some word as "offencive" we're teaching people that they should be offended by it.
Even people, that never cared about that word, would start getting a negative reaction to it.
We're basically increasing offence instead of decreasing it.

And in the long run it may become even worse.
For example if we declare the word "black" as racist, then people would start thinking like:
"He's wearing black clothes / driving a black car, he must be racist."

Of course it sounds silly today, but after many years, when we successfully settle the word "black" as racist and banned...

Aren't we undermining our own future?

"He likes to wear black clothes". "He wears clothes like a black". If you don't understand a significant difference, I doubt you are a native speaker, or perhaps you are lacking in emotional awareness to a clinical degree. You can argue that it is perfect coincidence that blacklists are bad and whitelists are good. You may find it a stretch that anyone in the modern world will really turn to another career because they learnt about slaves and masters in computer science. But linux is a project with a lot of people. It's a human project. At the moment, a lot of people want to change the direction of our society, a lot of people feel it is failing in many ways. This is a time of huge social upheaval, and surprise, linux developers are part of the world they live in. There are people desperate for new directions on climate, on women's rights, on wealth, on health and on human rights. There are forces opposed to change, whose interests are threatened. Many of the battles are symbolic. Statues, flags and words. The confederate flag is beautiful, it is a great graphical design ... how could some ink on a piece of cloth by offensive? What is a noose, but a skilled piece of ropework? These symbols are offensive not because of their intrinsic properties but because of their context of use. Words are symbols too. They may be dull in the dictionary, but in real life usage, they have sharp edges.


In the scope of things, replacing blacklist with blocklist in new code etc are trivial changes. The only harm anyone can raise is that it is a distraction, but the people doing the work required by this change want to do the work. It is funny for fans of linux to suddenly get picky about how open source developers choose to spend their time, after being such huge beneficiaries of the weird desire of these same people to spend time doing things to make the world a better place by writing code. These are people who spend hours pursuing a slightly more elegant implementation of caching, because they want to be proud of their work. I think pride in their project is the motivating force here too.

This initiative by the Linux project is completely at the prerogative of the Linux project; Linux is not a democracy; the rules are made by people who have earned enormous technical credibility, and who have leadership credibility. It can hardly be a surprise that senior Linux coders have ideals about a better world, a world of higher participation, of lower barriers. Most of them are chaotic good, surely. As project leaders, they also want to encourage more people to participate in the project.

But their motivations could be satanic and evil. Bad luck for us; it's their project. Just get over it.

[coder]

I wonder whether the motive behind starting silly shit-storms and ultimately irrelevant activities with regards to re-wording is actually to distract people from discussing relevant topics of social injustice, like the blatantly increasing inequality in the distribution of wealth. Changing something about those topics would cost a lot of money, and it seems like a cheap substitute to just have some coders change some wording.

I'll agree with you in the following sense. There are certainly politicians who'd much rather we get embroiled in "culture war" issues than actually focusing on how they govern.

That said, I think calling this a "culture war" issue is like saying an inflatable swimming pool raft is a boat. This feels like a culture war issue, with many people lining up on their usual sides, but it's really not. It's not really about culture, nor is it a war.

[coder]

Here is one of the founders of BLM explaining where their ideology comes from.

You can't tar an entire movement with the views of a few of its members. It's not like everyone marching with a BLM sign or T-shirt had to take an pledge or sign a contract saying they subscribe to all points of such an ideology. Most just want to see black people stop getting over-policed and have the same opportunities as everyone else.

I get that you feel threatened by BLM, but maybe it's not about you.

[coder]

People mostly argue about this change being useless, or that there're more important thing to do...

But isn't the entire initiative actually harmful?

Not if the terms are replaced with more precise or self-explanatory terms.

"Blacklist" is not a self-explanatory term. Either you have to know what it means, or else you have to presume that black means something bad that should be denied. So, it's not intuitive, unless you're racist. However, replacements like deny-list or exclude-list are self-explanatory, and therefore an improvement.

Master/slave is certainly more intuitive, but it lends itself to sloppy usage. If one can more precisely capture the relationship between two actors, then the change could be a net-positive.

declaring some word as "offencive" we're teaching people that they should be offended by it.
Even people, that never cared about that word, would start getting a negative reaction to it.
We're basically increasing offence instead of decreasing it.

Yours isn't the only perspective that matters. Maybe you didn't see the negative connotations or interpretations, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

For example if we declare the word "black" as racist, then people would start thinking like:
"He's wearing black clothes / driving a black car, he must be racist."

That doesn't make sense. The problem with blacklist is that it's a list of items to be denied.

If you used "black car" or "black clothes" as a way of saying it was a bad car, or that the clothes were cheaply made or in poor taste, then it would be problematic.

Aren't we undermining our own future?

You seem to be accusing people of trying to find ways to feel offended or victimized, but that's exactly what you're doing, yourself. You're not the victim and this isn't going to destroy your future. I don't think it's worth fighting.

[coder]

Every argument supporting this "inclusive terminology" nonsense has been such an awkward reach. C'mon SJW's, I'm sure you can do better!

I think you're so deeply entrenched in a bunker mentality that you've lost sight of what social justice really means. I don't consider this a social justice issue, nor is it really worth fighting. One could say you're being a bit of a "Karen", for even protesting it.

You're not losing anything, here. I don't understand why you find it so threatening. There are all kinds of accommodations made in large projects. Are you upset by the lack of profanity, in the kernel source? What about the whitespace and other naming conventions. Those restrict freedom, but they're also done as compromises.

SJW types are great at inventing and identifying "perceived" racism. e.g. this "inclusive terminology" effort.

One could as easily say you're good at inventing ways this is harmful to you.

Next time the power goes out and no one has lights, don't dare call it a "blackout". That's racist!

No, it intuitively describes what you see, if you're not in a place and at a time when you can also see daylight.

Now, explain to me how "blacklist" is at all intuitive.

[coder]

So, basically a bunch of white Americans decides to change the terminology in the name of being more "inclusive" and less imperialistic. Of course, they decide for the rest of the world, they decide based on the political developments in their country and knowing that this is all happening in their mother tongue. So, who has asked Chinese what they think about it? And what about South Africans? And what about Moroccans? Do Russian agree with the changes?

Okay, so it's now only white Americans who are kernel developers? Do the kernel developers know this?

this also imposes all non-native speakers to learn new terms to replace text-books terminology. In the end, for many non-native speakers this is *less* inclusive... But I guess this is all but a small sacrifice to receive the enlightenment from the universal America.

I won't elaborate on this too much, as I've already said this a few times, but replacing "blacklist" is actually good for non-native English speakers. Blacklist is not an intuitive term (unless you *are* looking at it in racist terms). However, everyone working in kernel source probably knows words like "deny" or "exclude".

[coder]

Yeap, definitely, like the fact that twice more white policemen are killed by black criminals than the other way around. 12 times more whites killed by blacks than the reverse. 30,000 black on white rapes vs... 0 W on B. Important "Details" Matter (IDM)

Since you seem to be so concerned with details, let's see your sources on that. You didn't even specify any time or spatial constraints for those statistics. We also don't know how that data was collected, over what period(s) of time, over what jurisdiction(s), or by whom.

And you also seem to believe that the only harm police can inflict on someone is murder. It's the ultimate harm, but not the only one.

[coder]

Anarchism is NOT chaos and destruction Anarchism means: Order by free will
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism

Anarchy is fragile. Every anarchist is either a fascist in disguise/denial, or totally deluding themselves about the fragility of true anarchy.

At best, human societies are attempts at striking a compromise between freedom and order. Billions of people have tried for thousands of years to get this right. A few anarchists aren't going to suddenly discover something that everyone has overlooked until now.

[bavay]

coder I definitely agree with "blacklist" and "white list" being replaced by "denylist" and "allowlist", this is much clearer. But the replacements for master / slave... The "surrogate" thing is very, very vague to me. So now, I think about many colleagues whose English is definitely less than stellar and I can already feel their pain. I already impose that our developments are commented in English, use English words for variables, functions, etc and every now and then we have to change some names because the original naming was not the best translation (ie lacking clarity for native English speakers), so you can imagine that injecting political correctness into the mix is not going to make things easier. By the way, I don't see why "slave" would have to be racist: slavery has been common at all times, over the whole World. For example, my ancestors were under the threat of slavery by the North Africans for several centuries (all the villages on the Northern coast of the Mediterranean were raided by the Arabs in search of slaves). And today, slavery has never been so common in the human history, but it does not happen in North America, so I guess nobody cares...

Okay, so it's now only white Americans who are kernel developers?

Of course not, but the people starting this whole thing are...