It often isn't. It's not uncommon that "replica" or "secondary" actually make more sense.
Secondary means backup or parity module.
Slave means neither of those things. A slave, in technical terms, means a "dumb" worker (meaning it doesn't make its own decisions about how it operates within the greater system) that is controlled by another module in the system (often called a "master").
And no, "worker" isn't descriptive because it doesn't specify the nature of autonomy within the system - oftentimes, a worker might autonomously pick tasks off a queue and perform work offline or something. A slave is directly, actively and imperatively given commands by another entity in the system.
Further, it is also implied that a slave has a lifetime that spans within the lifetime of the master. Workers, replicas, or secondaries do not share this trait.
"Slave" is the only word that accurately infers the technical operating aspects of such an actor within system's design.
Stop messing with our vocabulary please. We need it to do real work. Bring on the downvotes, because I know the performative woke crowd loves to ignore these facts.
Yes, and a slave database is probably better called a replica. Because that's more descriptive of what it is.
> Secondary means backup or parity module.
Or it could mean the second device on a bus, IDE master/slave for example seems to me to be better as primary/secondary (or even, first/second.)
> Further, it is also implied that a slave has a lifetime that spans within the lifetime of the master. Workers, replicas, or secondaries do not share this trait.
I dunno, that sounds to me like overloading a word unnecessarily.
> Stop messing with our vocabulary please.
No. Choosing more descriptive words is only a better thing. Stop trying to weirdly limit vocabulary, please.
I'm also very tired of being a labelled a Nazi, hence the tone.
BTW I remember Russians translating master/slave (in the IT context, e.g. primary/secondary master/slave for IDE PATA drives) as the the leading and the led.
I disagree, however I'm not a native English speaker. It is the most descriptive single word describing this mode of working. We can't ban master/slave as a word or we will loose understanding of what it means. Another poster already mentioned that there are actual human slaves in existence today. I once heard in our time there are more human slaves than ever (mostly due to there being more people overall). It is sad that large companies like Microsoft(Github) choose to waste energy on such pointless activities instead of actually doing something about modern slavery.
Microsoft is still in unique position of being able to pressure hardware makers. Why don't they pressure them into at least trying to improve conditions of actual slaves that mine cobalt and other rare materials at the bottom of their supply chain?