Replace oppressive terms with inclusive terms.

Wed Jun 23 05:17:26 PDT 2021

Dear Imre,

On Wed, Jun 23, 2021 at 10:33:52AM +0000, Imre Kaloz wrote:
> Daniel,
> 
> Let's ignore for a second that part of your mail is closer to ad
> hominem then a valid reply.
> 
> A few months ago when it has been noticed you've pushed your "main"
> branch to git, your answer went from that "accidentally happening" to
> stating that would have been the right thing to do. It didn't work out,
> so now you're trying to cross-post between lists to feel validated enough
> to push again for the political agenda you have, doubling down from "more
> inclusive" to "oppressive" - if you don't see how that's going down the
> rabbit hole I'm not sure how to explain the problem.

First of all, I'm not denying the political nature of this issue. Of
course this is political. However, 'keeping things as they are' is also
a political agenda: it's called conservativism. Doing that with hands
and feets when facing the thread of changes is called reactionism.

Secondly, the headline 'oppresive language' is a quote from the original
post on the hostap list. I would not have chosen that headline myself in
that way, but that's really a minor issue. I also don't like the
judgmental tone applied on people who may not even be aware of the
history and effects of the language they are using (you call it
'woke movement', I tend to agree when it comes to the exmtremes, but
wouldn't apply that label when it comes to suggesting changes towards
inclusive language -- but rather when people get excluded or even
banned for not having adapted to the latest linguistic update fast
enough).

And yes, my accidental push for a 'main' branch in our main repository
(which obviously would have needed more adjustments in MANY places) was
certainly not the greatest way to start the debate -- I merly meant to
make that change in my own staging tree. I personally do believe it's
the right thing to do, but of course, things are more complicated than
that when it comes to our main repository.

> 
> As Eleanor Roosevelt said: no one can make you feel inferior without
> your consent. Freedom of speech gives everyone the right to offend you
> while freedom of thought gives you the right to be offended by them.
> Being offended is a choice that you make; and you can find anything
> offensive if you really want to -- informal fallacies are your friends
> when it comes to this.
> 

I'm not sure I agree with Mrs. Roosevelt, who obviously made that
statement from an extremely priviledged position. She may have tried
her best to support the fight against racism and was certainly a very
progressive person at the time. That still didn't give her the right
to speak on behalf of others without being asked to do so.
More than half a century later, we do know a bit more about how
discrimination works in practice, and it does have a very material
component which does not go away if you just pretend it wasn't there.
(That may be a good match to her calvinist education though)

> There are only a few things more dangerous when you start censoring or
> reinterpreting past literature or events, specially when you hope that
> words you don't like have to be looked up in a dictionary. I don't think
> wiping out the past (which is an all-time favorite for both far-right and
> far-left) would make the world a better place. You know the drill, you
> either learn from the past or repeat it. This "woke movement" has an
> alarming number of similarities to both extremes from our history.

We can (and should!) keep history, of course. In the world of software,
we kinda got 'git' and similar tools for that. I would not want to
censor or edit the past in any way. It'd just be nice to not scare or
annoy potential users, reviewers or contributors away by making them
feel odd, unheard or inferior, and that is what happens if you keep
using terms like 'master' in a casual way, or use a language where you
casually assume that everyone (relevant) is male.

> 
> As far as I know we have a defined way to start voting and
> cross-posting was never one of them.

There was no voting going on, I didn't call anyone to vote.
I asked someone contributing on a different mailing list for advise
on how to start a similar process, and I merely made that transparent
by including openwrt-adm.
Of course, I would just start to suggest patches, like the person on
the hostap list did.

I'm aware that I will have to repeat these efforts every once in a
while, and usually that will make people who we haven't heard from
for a while suddenly show up and voice strong opinions.

> 
> You are free to be neutral, but nonsense like this will be always a
> hardline "no" from me.

I kinda guessed that, however, we are quite a bunch of people by now
and it'd be interesting to also hear other voices.

Cheers

Daniel

> 
> 
> Imre
> 
> ________________________________________
> From: Daniel Golle <daniel at makrotopia.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2021 11:26
> To: Imre Kaloz
> Cc: openwrt-adm at lists.openwrt.org; Fernando Frediani
> Subject: Re: Replace oppressive terms with inclusive terms.
> 
> 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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