Let's stop using the slavery analogy (master/slave). Any ideas?

[inieves]

This was prompted by studying some of the differences between MySQL and MariaDB... where the use of the terms of "master" and "slave" is making me want to puke.

I would propose leader/follower or even guru/disciple...

Seriously... any other thoughts/ideas?

I will happily email the results of this feedback to both organizations.

[mtmail]

I believe in Django it became leader/follower https://github.com/django/django/pull/2692 (discussion from 2014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7801646)

[davelnewton]

Why not just look at all the other places that have already brought this up and adopt one of those?

[informatimago]

Leaders often walk behind their “followers”. Disciples could teach a thing or two to gutus. We’re all equal, so write software accordingly! You make me puke trying to write software with an oppressive structure while trying to hude it under leniant terms !

[mojomark]

> We’re all equal, so write software accordingly!

This is a good point. Any node in a robust network (healthy society) has the capacity to lead should a current lead node fail or simply have exhausted it's alloted time in the leadership position (e.g. for fair-sharing of energy or maintenance resources). This network simply needs to be structured to support a dynamic shift in power. However, even distributed systems typically use some degree of heirarchy to improve efficiency (1). Just look at the Borg Queen herself (2).

So, you probably will always need some term to refer to the striations in nodal roles, even if those roles are very temporarily assigned (i.e. the mobility of nodes accross those striations is fluid).

FWIW, I don't find "master/slave" any more or less offensive than "Little/Big Endian".

1. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://...

2. http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Borg_Queen

[decasteve]

master/worker, queen/worker, mentor/apprentice, mentor/protege, alpha/beta, teacher/student, star/planet, coach/athlete.