[danbruc]

Master and slave are just words, sequences of letters, the meaning is in peoples heads and may be context dependent. Never in my life have I thought of slavery when I had to deal with those words in a technical context. I mean, I get the intention, if we would coin those terms today, then we would surely pick terms without this historical burden. But now that those terms have been widely used for a long time, trying to change language in countless standards, books, code bases, peoples heads, ... that just does not seem quite reasonable.

[NoZebra120vClip]

Here's how I think of it: would it be acceptable today, in 2023, to write a book or produce a film that depicts slavery, and has characters who are slave masters and slaves? I would hope it's acceptable, stipulating a sensitive depiction, because masters and slaves are part of reality, they are part of history (and they are still current and happening in our world today).

So if fictional masters and slaves are okay, then what are routers running OSPF? They're not human, and I hope nobody wants to anthropomorphize them so much that they could feel pain, or know injustice. So a router's master/slave relationship is strictly a technical fiction. Is it the best description of the relationship? Is it better than "leader/follower"? Perhaps; I know several other systems that qualify.

Does this trigger African-Americans today who never were slaves? Perhaps.

I'm just not sure of the wisdom to paper over history, to paper over reality, by saying these words are taboo because of what they represent, indeed, in a certain human context of usage.

I could argue that if we're prohibited from depicting masters and slaves in books, films, and OSPF, then people will more easily forget what it means to be a slave, and thereby be condemned to repeat the past which they do not remember. Perhaps it would be more useful to retain "master/slave" relationships among computers, so that we can demonstrate how that works to our children, and show them why it is detestable to human beings.

[zimpenfish]

> But now that those terms have been widely used for a long time, trying to change language in countless standards, books, code bases, peoples heads, ... that just does not seem quite reasonable

You know that there are other terms which have been widely used for a long time that we have successfully changed (most) people's minds about using? It is entirely reasonable to do.

[NoZebra120vClip]

Not only that, but there are a number of terms which are "updated" on a regular basis because they inevitably take on a derogatory connotation and must be euphemized repeatedly. I feel that this is often unreasonable political correctness.

In fact, it's a non-Inclusive practice. One effect of updating the language is that you exclude people of a certain generation. So you can identify and out and then segregate people based on the terminology they use. Are you familiar with "shibboleths"? Happens all the time.

What the IETF is doing here is creating shibboleths for the next generation of IT professionals to separate themselves from the previous generation, who may not be careful enough to update our language.

[zimpenfish]

> One effect of updating the language is that you exclude people of a certain generation.

Your argument is that making language more inclusive is, in fact, exclusionary because people of certain generations are, presumably, incapable of updating their language and thus will continue to go around saying the old, exclusionary things and thus being shunned by the younger generations?

Do you not want to think about that for a bit and consider how utterly ludicrous in sounds in the face of, y'know, reality?

[NoZebra120vClip]

Excerpts from Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky:

3. "Whenever possible go outside the expertise of the enemy"

4. "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules."

5. "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. There is no defense. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage."

8. "Keep the pressure on."

11. "If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside; this is based on the principle that every positive has its negative."

13. "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."

[danbruc]

If we have to change people anyway, why not change them to not associate those terms with slavery in a technical context - which I think most people already do anyway - instead of making them use different words? Same result and we do not have to update any existing technical texts.