Re: The request of words matter updated

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

Daniel Shahaf wrote on Tue, Oct 04, 2022 at 07:05:20 +0000:
> 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.  

Perhaps http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/tact.html?  It's not specific to Naming
Things, but it does touch on the question of how to interpret what other
people say.

In terms of jcb's thesis, the two positions on master/slave terminology
seem to be "tactlessness is a strict liability faux pas; if Bob opines
Alice spoke tactlessly, she should speak differently" and "Alice wasn't
being intentionally racist/speciesist/*, and Bob should follow Postel's
Law".

If I wrote the last paragraph well, I mispresented /both/ positions
equally badly :P

Daniel

> 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
> > 
> > 
> > 
>