Linux team approves new terminology, bans terms like 'blacklist' and 'slave'

submitted by TruthTeller from zdnet.com

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[–]sartorResartus 26 insightful - 5 fun26 insightful - 4 fun27 insightful - 5 fun -  (4 children)

But "master" and "slave" don't have racial connotations. They are just neutral English words. If this is what Linus spends his day pissing about with it speaks very ill of the quality of the project. FreeBSD looks interesting again.

[–]Trajan 16 insightful - 4 fun16 insightful - 3 fun17 insightful - 4 fun -  (3 children)

FreeBSD is infested. A while back they adopted the Geek Feminism code of conduct, which is as bad as one might imagine. It had a long list of the usual SJW lingo, such as ‘ Comments that reinforce systemic oppression ’ along with a ban on the dreaded virtual hug. They do seem to have since then reverted to something more sane, potentially because people quit and donors made it clear they would be taking their money elsewhere.

Not sure what it’s like there these days. I walked away after that nonsense.

In June of 2020 they had developers vote on the situation. See https://www.mail-archive.com/freebsd-announce@freebsd.org/msg00965.html

Only 4% favoured keeping that abomination of a code of conduct. 63% went with the LLVM code of conduct, with 33% opting for a Go-derived CoC. It's worth noting that the LLVM version includes political belief along with the identity categories. It also lacks the text stating that taking any action is at the discretion of the project. This is important because the Geek Feminism CoC, from which the FreeBSD CoC was drawn, explicitly states that they reserve the right to not act on complaints if the complainant's identity is insufficiently oppressed. Although not stated in that FreeBSD CoC, it was reasonable to assume it would matter given the use of left-wing identitarian concepts throughout the document. The Go CoC does not include political beliefs, but is still far less reeking of identity politics than the CoC FreeBSD forced through back in 2018. In short, the developers spoke and overwhelmingly rejected identity politics.

This is a far better choice and certainly less overtly based in identity politics. I'm glad they decided to let normal people have a say. The feminist CoC was shoved through to the objections of many users and developers. The FreeBSD lists became a culture wars battleground, and the admins of the Reddit sub were hammering down dissent. I'll give FreeBSD another chance, and will drop it again if there's ever a hint that they'll be instituting political purity tests for people who just want an operating system.

Edit: current situation

[–]RamenNoodlz 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I think this is a fucking weird ass hill to die on for either side of the argument....as a sysadmin, I don't give a fuck why things are called what they are, as long as they work and are documented.

[–]africant 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

then you're dumb

[–]RamenNoodlz 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Aight, I'm a dumb sysadmin. I still don't give a fuck.