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Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2020 12:48:20 -0400
To: "Levi Morrison via internals" <internals@lists.php.net>
Content-Type: text/plain
Subject: =?UTF-8?Q?Re:_[PHP-DEV]_About_the_use_of_the_terms_master/slave_and_blac?=
 =?UTF-8?Q?klist,_proposal_to_replace.?=
From: php@mjec.net ("Michael Cordover")

On Mon, Jun 15, 2020, at 12:36, Reinis Rozitis wrote:
> > The word "master" has 18 meanings in English, according to
> > https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/master - do you propose to outlaw those
> > 17 of them that have nothing to do with slavery, too? What about master's
> > degree, for example?
> > 
> 
> I wonder what will astronomers do with 'black hole' .. 
> 
> p.s. or physicists with 'white noise'. Also what happens when someone 
> decides 'whitespace' to be racist ..  Crazy times.

The black in black hole and the white in whitespace are descriptions of the actual colors of these things. There's no value judgement there. Blacklist, on the other hand, is explicitly making a judgement that things on that list are bad. The association of "black" with "bad" (and "white" with "good" in whitelist) is the problem, not merely the use of a color at all.

Similarly, while there are plenty of meanings of master, the use of master as a branch name comes from BitKeeper[0], where it was specifically in the context of a master and a slave. This is specifically an analogy rooted in violent practices. While it may not be jarring for you to hear it, it can be deeply upsetting to people even to hear mention of slavery.

It's totally ok for a project to have and preserve established practices. But you can't get away from these facts: maintaining this terminology excludes people. It hurts people. The question is does PHP want to be a project that defends that, or do we want to try as hard as possible not to hurt folks. I know which side I'm on.

- mjec

[0]: https://github.com/bitkeeper-scm/bitkeeper/blob/master/doc/HOWTO.ask