Re: The request of words matter updated

[Daniel Shahaf <d.s@daniel.shahaf.name>]

Wesley wrote on Mon, Oct 03, 2022 at 15:27:49 +0000:
> 
> 
> On 9/28/22 12:34, Peter Stephenson wrote:
> 
> > I'm guessing that of those who favour a change there are no major
> > feelings in favour of any of the various alternative ways of saying "upper"
> > and "lower"?
> >
> > Once that's established, perhaps someone could arrange for an online vote
> > at one of the websites that do that?  Given no technical change results
> > from any of this, opinion is all we've got, and there's evidently no
> > sign of a consensus.
> 
> Do you need consensus on this change? I mean, if someone provided a
> patch that changes master/slave to something else that makes sense
> because they want to stay clear of those words, would it not be
> accepted?

pws posted such a patch upthread.

> The change is essentially a refactor and should pass all the tests..
> 

Any change has costs.  In this case, the change might shadow or unshadow
another symbol (pws checked that for the terms his patch uses), would be
one more manual step for any future «blame» or «log» run, would
necessitate a rebase for anyone who has local patches to zpty.c, and
would introduce a https://xkcd.com/927/ problem to anyone reading zsh's
pseudo-terminal module's C source file.

On the other hand, the change would allegedly make it easier for some
people to participate in the community.

On the third hand, the change would likely have social costs as well.
However, these considerations are largely not specific to zsh, so I
expect we could save ourselves a lot of time by finding a good write-up
of the pros and cons of such terminology changes.  

Speaking of write-ups, I wonder if producingoss would accept patches
adding discussion of such terminology changes.

Cheers,

Daniel

> I'm not in favor of the change because there is not a technical reason
> to solve. It is purely a policital (correctness) change. I don't see how
> the change of master/slave in code is changing actual systematic racism
> around the world or how it confronts former colonizing countries with
> their often brutal past. The change itself should have minimal to no
> impact on the code itself and should not present any problems to the
> outside world.
> 
> All that said, I think IBM should be the driver of the change as it
> doesn't comply with their "Words matter" policy. They just threw a stick
> in a bee hive and now are watching the bees go crazy. If they want it
> fixed, they should provide the patches to fix *their* political issue.
> Unless someone within the zsh project really agrees with their view ofc.
> 
> Those are my 2 cents on this topic.
> 
> Cheers,
> Wesley
> 
> --
> Wesley Schwengle
> 
> 
>