Replace oppressive terms with inclusive terms.

Wed Jun 23 02:26:00 PDT 2021

Hi Imre,

I'm glad to see you are joining the discussion.

On Wed, Jun 23, 2021 at 08:03:45AM +0000, Imre Kaloz wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Not all of these are improvements if any at all. The native vs built-in
> are the best example, while others (PITM?!) are nothing more then
> Orwellian nightmare.

If you actually had a look at the patch series I referenced you would
have seen that it does NOT carelessly use 'built-in' as a replacement for
'native' but rather makes uses quite sensitive and meaningful choices
instead.

And never mind that it's Mallory and Eve being the PITM in Schneier's
textbook (ok, that's probably another problem)...

Even in the harsh worls of commercial shipping the rather important term
'man over board' (MOB) is increasingly being replaced by 'person over
board' (POB).[1]

All that being said, I think it'd be good to start the process
word-by-word, and start with easy and obvious ones ('master' -> 'main',
'sane' -> 'valid', 'whitelist' -> 'allowlist', ...).

Once we arrive at the more tricky ones (e.g. 'native'), we can continue
the debate (and discuss them one-by-one).

> IT is the world where no-one cares about your gender, skin color,
> religion, where do you came from or who do you have sex with -- what
> matters is what you do.

That would, of course, be great. In such a world, terms like 'master' or
'blacklist' would no longer be meaningful and people would need to read
history books in order to understand what they mean, as the intuitive
understanding as of today is still based on our colonial past in these
cases, for example.

Just imagine you'd live in that future where all group-based
discrimination and such would really have been just a thing of a remote
past. Would you even be able to understand those 20th-century software
terms without needing to learn about rather ugly parts of human history?

Using language which refers to that oppresive legacy in a casual way just
shows how much those *isms are still present and need to be fought, so
one day we will eventually arrive in that beautiful world you are
refering to.

> These trends are attacks from the ancient regime, trying to polarize,
> divide and conquer this world - infesting it with politically motivated
> ideas to bring in exactly the problems they claim to fight against.

Can you specify 'the ancient regimes' and how those 'attacks' are
supposedly orchestrated?

And in which sense is it polarizing and dividing to make use of inclusive
language such as the exmaples in the mentioned patch series?

I do see that overdoing it can become a problem, especially if it results
in sanctioning non-compliance. That's not what is being suggested here.

And, of course, dialectic materialism applies here as well, one needs the
resources to even be able to care of such things. I believe being part of
this mailing list or even actively joining this debate on which ever
position is evidence enough for having them.

> These changes have about as much value as compilers process from them.

I take that as a 'neutral' vote from your side then ;)

Cheers

Daniel

> 
> 
> Imre
> 

[1]: https://www.morganscloud.com/2018/10/20/ais-person-overboard-beacons-setting-up-the-boat-alarms-right/

> ________________________________________
> From: openwrt-adm <openwrt-adm-bounces at lists.openwrt.org> on behalf of Daniel Golle <daniel at makrotopia.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2021 09:04
> To: Fernando Frediani
> Cc: openwrt-adm at lists.openwrt.org
> Subject: Re: Replace oppressive terms with inclusive terms.
> 
> Hi Fernando,
> 
> On Tue, Jun 22, 2021 at 10:57:24PM -0300, Fernando Frediani wrote:
> > A note I made is that it is important to find out what exactly are the
> > "oppressive words" and "inclusive terms" in order to fall into a annoying
> > and unnecessary scenario of political correctness that may end up distancing
> > people and under privileging technical knowledge in favor of pure ideology.
> 
> Yes, I can see that can be an issue in some cases, and this shouldn't
> be about establishing another l33t-speak, used yet again as a tool for
> oppression and not actually helping anyone.
> 
> Please take a look at the patch series posted for hostap:
> 
> https://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/hostap/2021-June/039653.html
> 
> I think most of these are very good examples of linguistical
> **improvements** even without wearing any ideological glasses (if that's
> something even possible at all, I guess everyone is wearing some at all
> time; denying that is also just yet another ideology which is not aware
> of itself being one).
> 
> Chances for confusions or misunderstandings are even reduced as using
> 'valid' or 'validity' instead of 'sane' or 'sanity' is actually really
> what is meant there to begin with.
> 
> Of course, replacing 'native' with 'built-in' in every case is the
> counter example here, as many things which we consider 'native' aren't
> necessarily 'built-in' at all. Sometimes they are just 'originally made
> or designed for something' or 'commonly used in the context of something'.
> 
> However, this patch series shows that every single case can be an
> improvement, none of the replacement terms are uncommon or hard to
> understand, all of them have dictionary definition which are closer to
> what we actually want to express than the terms replaced.
> 
> 
> Best regards
> 
> 
> Daniel
> 
> 
> 
> 
> >
> > Regards
> >
> > On 22/06/2021 19:49, Daniel Golle wrote:
> > > Hi Arowa,
> > >
> > > thank you very much for your work on this issue!
> > >
> > > I am aware that this is an uphill battle as it disrupts routine without
> > > being technically necessary.
> > > Many of us will go through episodes where we get annoyed with our own
> > > habits and constantly want to apologize when we accidentally use terms
> > > with oppressive heritage (and I must admit this still happens to me quite
> > > often, it takes more than 'sed' to make these changes in our brains as
> > > well).
> > >
> > > To make the computing world a better place, at least for future
> > > generations, I sincerely hope efforts like this succeed.
> > >
> > > If you have scripts to easily detect suppressive language in a code
> > > repository and suggest meaningful replacements, like the ones in this
> > > patch series, I would be happy if you could share them with me so that I
> > > can suggest similar changes for openwrt.git. Pre-built 'sed' scripts (and
> > > perhaps 'coccinelle'[1] patches when we work on code) would of course be
> > > great for this purpose, as it would reduce the risk of breaking something
> > > (and also make it easier and guarantee consistency)
> > >
> > > With kind regards
> > >
> > >
> > > Daniel
> > >
> > > [1]: https://coccinelle.gitlabpages.inria.fr/
> > >
> > > On Tue, Jun 22, 2021 at 02:29:01PM -0700, Arowa Suliman wrote:
> > > > As part of using inclusive language in code, submitting the following
> > > > patches to replace some of the instances of oppressive words with
> > > > inclusive terms.
> > > > In-Reply-To:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
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