| HN Mirror

Apocryphon 3848 days ago

You left out "also to make improvements so Buildbot works better in the Amazon EC2 cloud". Do you honestly think that the will spend even a majority, let alone all, of the $15k on a search and replace operation?

Open question: If this is a search & replace operation, why does it need to be mentioned in a $15k grant at all?

To me, this is one of two things. Either Mozilla is saying "We'll give you money, but you gotta get rid of words we don't like", or they're actually spending significant efforts on political correctness.

Both outcomes are frankly disheartening. I will no longer be donating to Mozilla. They're spreading themselves thin as it is, they don't have the resources to throw away money on political pointlessness.

brighteyes 3848 days ago

It's a documentation change, but even documentation changes need time and effort to be done properly. That's why this hasn't happened yet - everyone was on board, but no one actually stepped up to do the work, until now.

Not a lot of work - it's not a significant part of the grant to buildbot, and completely insignificant in the big picture of the other grants.

I can understand if you personally don't consider any efforts on such a topic worthwhile, and respect you for your position. But a lot of people do care about it, buildbot has wanted to do it for a while, and it harms no one to finally get this accomplished.

> and it harms no one to finally get this accomplished

Doesn't it now?

See my detailed answer below [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10721003] as to why this sort of thing is actively harmful.

Sad to see HN downvoting legitimate discussion left and right, though. This is as bad as reddit.

brighteyes 3848 days ago

I read that answer, and don't see it point out harm? You do mention some general harm in community friction and worry, and I do agree that is a concern - but that's happening anyhow right now. Yes, it's bad, but removing the word "slave" won't change that.

I do get the worry about overreach. Node.js has a PR that will automate looking for "problematic" words, which starts to sound Orwellian. However, the opposite extreme of "change no words no matter who is offended" can't work either. We need to find a reasonable middle ground.

It seems like removing "slave" is fairly reasonable - that's my feeling. What I find far more unreasonable are drive-by comments that complain without offering to do some work to help. But work to help is exactly what's happening in this (small part of this) story.

siegecraft 3848 days ago

I read your answer and I don't think it's compelling.

A better reason is that naming things is hard, and changing master/slave to leader/follower dilutes the accuracy of the metaphor. That's why hard drives and databases, etc use master/slave, and consensus algorithms or self-organizing networks use leader/follower.

After all, if you don't lose meaning from changing the terms, there's nothing to argue aganst from a technical perspective. Then it just becomes your ideologies vs. their's and now people are arguing about politics in pull requests instead of being productive.

Apocryphon 3848 days ago

Maybe they want to draw attention away from their use of EC2.

https://supybot.buildbot.net/meetings/buildbot/2015/buildbot...

Revisor 3841 days ago

I'm too late in this discussion, but they are really going to use the majority of the grant, namely $10k out of the $15k, to replace the word "slave". See

> Buildbot's MOSS application: $10k to remove slave from all code/docs, $5k to work on stability/handling shutting down EC2 slaves when buildbot master crashes/exits/restarts (djmitche, 16:39:19)

https://github.com/django/django/pull/2692

Oh they're not alone in that absurdity. See for example symmetric BS in Django:

Welcome to the "fear of offence" culture. Should coin a term for that - offendiphobic?

Edit: I'd like to point out to the silent downvoters here that there's legitimate concerns being raised in this subthread about money being wasted on political correctness, which are not being addressed by any of you. If you are unable to give a counterpoint, you should rethink your position instead of downvoting based on emotions.

I'm a downvoter: I find arguments like this one to be ideological rants and not valuable.

For every person and in every culture, offending people is considered wrong. To suggest that it doesn't matter is not a serious argument.

Apparently 'slave' doesn't offend you. It doesn't offend me either (I remember being a little uncomfortable with it long ago, when I first encountered it, but I don't notice it now). But for me to say that therefore it is not offensive to others would be ignorant and self-centered, as if the world revolves around my views and experiences. If others say they are offended then I respect that; I hope they would respect my concerns if I was offended.

Also, a common cause of discrimination is due to honest ignorance on the part of people in the dominant group. Like all humans, they are blind to things that they don't experience themselves; for example, consider law enforcement discrimination against minorities. It's happened for decades or centuries, but wasn't taken seriously until we actually had film of it due to the spread of cameras. That's another good reason to think that whether or not something bothers me is not evidence of whether it offends others.

Finally, the dominant culture in the U.S. was built at a time of widespread, accepted discrimination, and many artefacts of that time persist. People may get tired of seeing so much of it being challenged and changed, from school buildings named after slave holders; Confederate flags; and movie casts, company executives, etc. being almost all white and mostly male, etc. But being tired of the challenge and change, rather than of the discrimination, is a 'first world' problem, so to speak.

dragonwriter 3848 days ago

> For every person and in every culture, offending people is considered wrong.

That's actually not at all true. For many people, and in many cultures, certain things are considered both wrong and proper subjects for offense, certain things are considered wrong when they are the subject of offense (and thus are also proper, while not necessary, subjects of offense), and other things are not considered wrong independently of whether some people find them offensive (and, in fact, being offended by them, or at least expressing such offense, may be considered wrong itself.)

The idea that anything that anyone finds offensive is, ipso facto, wrong is not a cultural universal, and AFAICT not held by many people at all (even people who seem in some contexts to appeal to that idea seem to find some instances of offense unjustified and unworthy of consideration.)

Thanks for speaking up. To answer your points: There's a line, and people are crossing it.

There are words in the english language which are offensive because they are specifically employed to be offensive. Swear words, words used in offensive (as in, literally offensive) contexts, verbal abuse etc.

We avoid using this words in civilized discourse not because we're afraid to offend, but because we have no need for them. We don't intend to offend. If we intend to offend, we use them - there is no political correctness involved in not using actual offensive terms.

Now when a word has a non-offensive meaning and actually offends people, it's important to look at why this happens. Does it only offend one person or does it offend many? Is it meant to offend, is it used in an actual offensive context? Is the person being offended themselves or by proxy?

This is a conversation I've had before when the Django PR came up, so I'll save you looking these up. You'll note that in that PR, almost everybody praising the PR was white, 18-30 years old. The people being offended are near-unanimously fighting a cause that isn't their own.

There's nothing wrong with that of course - I'm not gay, yet I fight for gay rights for example. But was this ever actually an issue for the black community?

Do you know why it's important to answer that question? Because if the answer is no, then you are fabricating problems for a community you are not even a part of. It is not harmless - it is actively harmful.

If a word, a technical word, was not a problem one day, and is a problem the next, you have now artificially widened the gap a certain minority needs to cross in order to be part of the programming community.

And if you look at it closely, you'll see this is exactly what happened. This issue got artificially popular with Django (just about a decade after the LA nonissue). Now it's causing problems in other parts of the technical community. Something which wasn't a problem a year ago, is now a problem - your FOSS project which was open to all, is now perceived as potentially racist.

I don't get pissed off at these things because I get a kick out of discrimination. I get pissed off because they make things worse.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics

I agree that if it's not offensive to blacks (or maybe to someone I'm not thinking of) then it doesn't matter. But ...

1) You are saying that you don't know if it's offensive to blacks. Shouldn't we find out before condemning the change?

2) I think you are blowing out of proportion the consequences of erring on the side of not offending. I think they are minor. It's really about a bigger issue, which is why both of us are writing so many words about it.

3) I take your word for it that this isn't the case for you, but for many people this issue is a proxy - a dog-whistle[1] - for change to the status quo dominant culture. It's like people who objected to or advocated school busing when really it was about desegregation, or people fighting over Syrian refugees when it's really about Muslim immigrants (at least Trump was honest).

Anyway, the essential thing is to get these issues out in the open and learn from each other. Good talking to you.

> You are saying that you don't know if it's offensive to blacks.

I was very careful not to say anything on what I know. But since you bring it up, what I know is that the original issue in the tracker was created in bad faith and people hopped on the bandwagon. Addressing this is another discussion entirely.

> I think you are blowing out of proportion the consequences of erring on the side of not offending.

I'm open to hear arguments as to why what I'm saying is "blowing things out of proportions", when all I'm claiming is that the direct results of these actions are producing the exact negative of the effects they intend to. So really, my argument's proportion is relative to how large of an issue you think the original premise is.

Another consequence of course is opening your project up to abuse. If people see that you'll cave in to any form of "political correctness" pressure, they'll double down and find more faults, and if there are no more faults they'll create them for you. I'm speaking from experience - This is something we see a lot in the game development community.

> what I know is that the original issue in the tracker was created in bad faith

I think it's unfair to the Django people to make that allegation without substantiating it. Otherwise it's just a mean rumor.

> all I'm claiming is that the direct results of these actions are producing the exact negative of the effects they intend to. ... If people see that you'll cave in to any form of "political correctness" pressure, they'll double down and find more faults, and if there are no more faults they'll create them for you.

It's hard to tell if you are making a prediction or saying it has happened. Could you provide evidence of these consequences happening to the Django project? Also, perhaps those additional faults are real to others but not to you - returning us to the orginal discussion of how one judges what is 'offensive'.

> "political correctness" pressure

I think today's "political correctness" is to criticize people pointing out any kind of prejudice. They are automatically assumed to be in bad faith and attacked, with the same criticisms almost every time, regardless of the content or merits of their complaint. It's an attempt to intimidate into silence anyone thinking about complaining, which I think is unhealthy and disrespectful.

foota 3848 days ago

Can I ask how the issue was created in bad faith?

jldugger 3848 days ago

"The black community hasn't told us it's a problem" isn't a very convincing argument when the intersection of your community and theirs is empty.

> If a word, a technical word, was not a problem one day, and is a problem the next, you have now artificially widened the gap a certain minority needs to cross in order to be part of the programming community.

This is a stretch. Substituting careless technical writing for equally clear and meaningful terminology doesn't harm anyone's ability to stand up continuous integration.

> Substituting careless technical writing for equally clear and meaningful terminology doesn't harm anyone's ability to stand up continuous integration

You are misinterpreting what I'm saying. Substituting one word for another is not harmful in and of itself. The context around it makes it harmful.

For the sake of the argument, let's go to a parallel universe in which a group (any group) decides that the word "lambda" is offensive to them. Like very offensive, heavily politicized etc. It's not a very common word overall in English, but used quite a bit in specific domains.

Now let's say some small parts of the programming community gets together and agrees that "lambda" is offensive and changes it to a less-offensive equivalent. Is the programming community now more or less welcoming overall?

If there was a real problem with the word, the outcome is slightly positive. But if there wasn't, the outcome is extremely negative: Something which didn't use to be a problem, is now a problem. The community appears less inclusive.

Back to our universe now. Do you still think it's wise to carelessly change words whenever someone claims they're offended without actually verifying those claims? Is it still wise to bundle up to an issue you're not affected by when it's more than likely created by people who aren't affected by it either?

I do hope at least some people realize that this is widely open to abuse, as well.

> if there wasn't [a real problem with the word], the outcome is extremely negative: Something which didn't use to be a problem, is now a problem. The community appears less inclusive.

Here's where I lose you. I don't see how it's more than very slightly negative. To whom is the community less inclusive? People who like to use the word "slave"? People who think this issue is a waste of time? You can find people like that for every issue; if that minor detail turns them away, they weren't going to stay long. People who ideologically object to the attention paid to prejudice or actually are prejudicial? The latter are an easy case; the former - anyone working on a team must learn to respect others' views and accept being outvoted, with regularity.

marbletiles 3848 days ago

You are being silently down voted because nobody wants to engage the sea-lion.

There are not "legitimate concerns being raised", it's just you, complaining that money is being spent on "political correctness", as if it's somehow bad for a non-profit to spend money to try and improve the world.

Your other points are no more legitimate than "gay used to be a perfectly good word meaning happy how can we express happiness without it" or "people don't object to me when I call them [racial slur] so it must be fine" have ever been. Addressing them directly is exactly the sort of fruitless conversation derail nobody wants.

I have no idea what you're going on about, your post is all over the place. I'll try to answer as best I can.

> There are not "legitimate concerns being raised", it's just you, complaining that money is being spent on "political correctness", as if it's somehow bad for a non-profit to spend money to try and improve the world.

OK so first of all, a significant amount of my donation money goes to Mozilla - so this is not me complaining where "money is being spent", it's me being concerned my money is not being spent efficiently.

Second, "to try and improve the world", sorry, what? Grepping out technical terms from documentation is "improving the world" now? You have one low bar for improvements. Mozilla's mission is to keep the web open and free (or so they claim), and political correctness has nothing to do with it. Even if it were a worthy goal to reword such docs (it's really not, and I explained why), it is not Mozilla's job. They're not good at that task nor are they a company you donate to to get such tasks done.

As for what you're going on about with the word "gay" or racial slurs... I'm honestly speechless if you're equating them together, let alone equating them to the word "slave" which is used non-offensively in several communities. If you up and decided that slave is a racial slur now, maybe I should just up and decide that your posts offend me and that they should be replaced with rainbows.

marbletiles 3848 days ago

First: yes, this is about you. But you were trying to present it as if there was a contingent with you. There doesn't appear to be.

Second: "political correctness" is easily semantically replaced with "trying to avoid excluding people". Trying to avoid excluding people is a basic way to improve the world, and should be applied across all fields, including software engineering.

Third, I am pointing out that your point about language is without merit. There are all sorts of words which were considered one way by reasonable people at one time which no longer are. No matter how in the right you feel you are about the purity of using master/slave, the tide is against you. Just like analogously it was with those who thought certain racial slurs were purely descriptive.

scrollaway 3847 days ago

In the country I currently live in, the "tide" is to close all borders and consider all muslims terrorists. How's that for excluding people? Should I hop on to that tide too?

If you think the tide is always right, you got another think coming. Your mentality seems to be "I'll be part of the tide to make sure I'm not racist". That is the mentality of someone who cannot form opinions of their own.

I'll make a sidenote here and remind you that that tide you're going on about is extreme american culture. In Europe, you bring this idiocy up and you will be laughed out of the front door. Amusingly, if you look at the upvote/downvote history on the posts here, you'll find that they coincide with active hours in the US. As a night owl, this is something I see a lot on HN and Reddit alike.

marbletiles 3847 days ago

Sorry, I'm in Europe and disagree. This sort of thing is even less contentious here — this particular change went through a number of offices I know with barely a murmur.

You shouldn't surf blindly. Naturally you choose the tide you want to surf. Do you want to ride the waves toward hatred, oppression and exclusion, or do you want to swim towards inclusion and togetherness? I choose the latter, even if it means seeming precious to some.

spikels 3848 days ago

It is no secret that both Mozilla and Django have a strong politically correct / social justice culture. This makes the two organizations more compatible.

huxley 3847 days ago

If a "fear of offence" culture exists, aren't you're part of it?

You've spent a lot of time here being offended by political correctness, "wasted money" and alleged political motivations.

Can you think of why one sentence in a successful Buildbot grant proposal would get you so upset that you'd write thousands of words, many of which slander Mozilla, Django and Buildbot community members?

It wasn't logic that got you there, it was an emotional overreaction to something that really doesn't concern you at all except that it offends your politics.

scrollaway 3847 days ago

That I choose to defend my point of view, no matter how insignificant, is of little relevance to the point at hand. I enjoy a debate.

And am I "offended" now? I'm not offended, I'm sad. I'm sad common sense is out of the window when it comes to treating minorities with respect and dignity.

This little thread is very representative of the circus of political correctness: A bunch of people not part of a minority, speaking and acting on behalf of a minority that did not have a problem in the first place.

Offending my politics. Good one.

nnethercote 3848 days ago

Mozilla gave out $503,000, only $15,000 of which went to Buildbot (that's 2.9%), and only part of that money is going toward the Buildbot docs change; the rest is going towards "improvements so Buildbot works better in the Amazon EC2 cloud".

It is a bit strange that the blog post listed the smallest donation first, which meant that the documentation change was the first task mentioned. But it's a tiny part of the whole picture.

x1024 3848 days ago

We judge them by the way they present themselves. This is the first item on the first listed recipient of a grant. Apparently, Mozilla think that this is the most important thing.

So your argument is invalid.

x1024 3848 days ago

That moment when you become a victim of Poe's law... Software development is stupid and crazy now.

STRiDEX 3848 days ago

Not defending the absurdity of removing/changing words for sensitivity, but it is in quite a few documents. https://github.com/buildbot/buildbot/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q...

jonknee 3848 days ago

I think the OP was insinuating that a search and replace for the word slave is probably not a $15,000 task.

That, and maybe also that some of us who donated to Mozilla are disappointed to see money going towards political correctness.

Apocryphon 3848 days ago

They've still got a project named Bro, so maybe they're equal opportunity contrarians.