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Re:Merge tag 'inclusive-terminology' into Linux kernel by bsaul on Sunday July 12, 2020 @02:52PM (#23813741)
That would all be perfectly fine reasons to rename the thing, on a case by case basis, if the community of developers working on the given project feel the name is too ambiguous and leads to confusion. That's really up to them to decide that.

Having a general ban on the term because of some social pressure to apply "inclusive terminology" is an entirely different issue.

Re:Merge tag 'inclusive-terminology' into Linux kernel by geofft on Sunday July 12, 2020 @02:58PM (#23813789)
I haven't seen a single instance where "master"/"slave" is the most accurate technical term to be found. (I have seen instances where it's important to use those terms because those are the existing terms in some particular field / from some particular API, which the commit at hand acknowledges is a reason to keep them. So I think you're agreeing with the commit here.)

In general, most of the arguments I've seen for keeping the master/slave terms in contexts where they could be renamed without breaking compatibility are for social pressure reasons ("don't give into the mob" / "SJWs are taking over tech" / "free software should be apolitical" / etc.) and not for technical reasons.

Re:Merge tag 'inclusive-terminology' into Linux kernel by TeaDrunk on Sunday July 12, 2020 @02:55PM (#23813768)
Linux kernel is in fact a community of developers working on a given project. But we're still debating if it's fine or not for them to decide what to do on their own project.
Re:Merge tag 'inclusive-terminology' into Linux kernel by bsaul on Sunday July 12, 2020 @05:14PM (#23814824)
that's only half of my sentence, the other being that they discuss the matter with precision concern in mind. Not politics or social pressure.

And we are debating this, because the fact that they decide to accept to comply with the "inclusive-terminology" movement is going to create a huge precedent, and will actually put an immense pressure on all the other developer community.

Re:Merge tag 'inclusive-terminology' into Linux kernel by TeaDrunk on Sunday July 12, 2020 @11:48PM (#23816975)
Isn’t the significant controversy and criticism on Linus For choosing to do this also social pressure on him?