Sorry, how is NOT using the terms master and slave helping actual slaves? I used to be bullied in school when I was young. I'm sure if people removed the term nerd and bully from some software projects I'd be much better off. Thank god for the word police.

In what context can we use the terms master and slave?

The term slave means to be controlled by another entity in its most basic definition. Just because there are loads of people who are slaves in the world doesn't make that term less accurate for its other uses.

I’ve never seen the words nerd or bully in code or software architecture, so that seems to be a spurious example.

Businesses already tend not to use sensitive words, especially publicly. This is just adding to that list. For example, whilst you can kill a process we don’t use the word murder. Same for lots of other negatively emotional words.

People do get hung up on naming & terminology. But as has been mentioned elsewhere, master/slave is often chosen through convention when other names would be clearer. We have a whitelist application at work that is actually an event routing gateway. If we renamed it it’d be easier to explain.

To me it seems an easy task to not use master/slave and white/black when I’m naming things, not something worth arguing about, especially if there’s a chance it removes some negativity for some people. I’m happy to spend a few minutes helping someone with a chore and I see this as the same low level of effort and impact.

I understand the need to change the words if a different word is clearer. But the intent behind this particular case is more of a matter of bowing to the outrage culture rather than for usefulness purposes.

It's not "outrage culture", it's being considerate and thoughtful, which is something most of us practice every day.

You can frame it as "bowing down" either way. The other option is to "bow down" to those who do no want to change but have no good reasons beyond that it's what they are used to and, typically, negative partisanship (that on principle they object to anything promoted by the other side of the political divide, simply because). People need to find better arguments than emotionally & illogically driven defensiveness.

I think the same argument can be had about the other side. People who push for changing words like this need to find better arguments that emotionally driven ones.

The other option is to have a nuanced debate from both sides where one side isn't thought of as hateful and evil. One side is saying "hey this is a slippery slope" the other side is saying "no you're wrong and you're what's wrong with the world today".

Also, where has my defensiveness been at all illogical or emotional? The arguments presented against doing this seem pretty sound from the people who can explain their reasons.

It is outrage culture. It wasn't a problem for decades and all of a sudden it is.