Replace "master" and "slave" terms in Redis
22 Dec 2018Suggestion on Github issues for Redis:
The summary is: master and slave have racial meanings (especially in North America, but also more generally) and it would be good to avoid them.
I’m anti-slavery (of course) but I think some of this recent “sensitivity” to all topics is a bit ridiculous.
Some great comments:
Mariano Pérez Rodríguez: Most words have a plethora of meanings, it is YOU (the reader) the one who chooses to take a system’s dynamic description term as a racial thing, so, maybe you should just not do it.
Itamar Haber: IMO dominatrix and submissive is the politically correct terminology, since it is in fact consensual as well as puts the gentler gender in the proper place.
Just some guy: It’s slave/master which are very well established terms for “the thing that controls the databus” or “the bit of software that dictates what the others do and coordinates things and the other ones that obey”. If it was “Massah” and “N!gger” I’d totally agree with you.
And the conclusion:
TLDR: If I would start Redis from scratch I would pick a different terminology. … 3.Redis has a SALVEOF NO ONE command that was designed on purpose as a freedom message. So I’ll leave it as it is.
But it gets better:
Again, by using this term in Redis and by linking to external pages, I want to take the opportunity to remember that we are all slaves. Slaves of businesses, of food advertising, of industrial complex, of politically correct rules to follow, and so forth. Feel free to address the same problem in different ways in other software projects, but for Redis I want to purse this way I said.