XSF Discussion - 2021-03-04

https://twitter.com/FredericJacobs/status/1367115794363088897

Well, that's fun.

There's a considerable number of comments in that Twitter thread, some saying it's rubbish and others saying it's blown open RSA. It'll be interesting to see if the paper gets peer-reviewed or if anyone builds a practical demonstrator.

The replies in the thread seem like a prime (heh) example of “don’t read the comments” :)

https://github.com/lducas/SchnorrGate strongly suggests it doesn't actually work.

If its a paper from 2019 and it was not top news on different newspapers then its not "destroying RSA" (rule of thump, and I didn't read the content)

2021, though based on an earlier paper. Last version published yesterday, pre-print, so I wasn't expecting it to be front page news yet. I mean it's not as dramatic as it claims by a long shot, by all accounts, but I'm glad I dug into it a bit.

dwd, from what I heard, it is a re-upload of a paper from 2019 without major differences

but I didn’t dig into it eihter, so I should probably just shut up :)

OT but so cool: https://fsfe.org/news/2021/news-20210302-01https://fsfe.org/news/2021/news-20210302-01

> Refund of pre-installed Windows: Lenovo must pay 20,000 euros in damages

;-)

Hello everyone, Im proposing to ban the terminology 'master and slave' terminology within the XSF documentations. These terms can be offensive for victims of slavery.

Sorry, this person has been causing a nuisance in other MUCs

As in, verbally insulting people with derogatory language

fwiw it doesn’t seem to appear in a lot of xeps https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Axmpp.org+master+slave

virtually none

Daniel, yes, that person is a troll and those are not their real concerns

I'd be up for us updating what occurences there are

> I'd be up for us updating what occurences there are +1

Usage of Shakespeare material is offensive for people without good traditional education such as me.

We can send you a book

Ok.

[controversial opinion] I think that updating our documents will not have any measurable effect on the lives of slavery victims, but would cost us significant effort for discussing the benefits and costs, reviewing documents, applying our document update processes etc.

I would like it to not cost us more than 5 minutes and a PR

If you want to make it something bigger, that's your choice :)

MattJ: you can ask neelix to provide such a PR.

After their behaviour in operators@ yesterday, I wouldn't collaborate with them on anything

Then let's just pretend nothing happened and move on?

Parallel issues

Another parallel issue: for anyone who is blissfully unaware, operators@ has become the accidental focus of an ongoing ideological flamewar (for want of a better term)

To assist with moderation I'm considering a policy of only granting verified server admins voice by default

sounds sensible

This may or may not be a temporary measure, but I think it will help to improve the signal to noise ratio

which has plummeted in recent days

> [controversial opinion] I think that updating our documents will not have any measurable effect on the lives of slavery victims, but would cost us significant effort for discussing the benefits and costs, reviewing documents, applying our document update processes etc. I'm not an expert on this matter but a lot of experts are telling me that language does in fact matter

And influces the way we think and act

But again the only xep that uses this terminology is fmuc which isn't even used

MattJ: I agree that it's a sensible measure, at least temporarily. Probably not so good in the long term

Unless you want to have a bot that will auto-voice everybody joining from an account that's listed in the respective domain's 0157

That's part of the plan, yes

There's certainly correlation between language and action, but I'm not sure experts will be able to show that deliberate modification of language changes action.

But even than that's a significant hurdle

Whether language matters or not, which none of us are experts on, consider that practically adusting a couple of words in a XEP now is minimal burden compared to the potential future burden of defending our choice not to update the document well into the future

Totally agree :-)

Whether you agree or not, the industry is moving away from such terminology, and the XSF is very possibly going to get called out for not following this shift

FWIW, replacing master/slave in documents sounds like a low hanging fruit we can do even if we’re not certain if it helps or not. Reluctance for action here is hardly justifiable, especially if it doesn’t affect the core architecture or a lot of things (as it would for example for many DNS implementations)

The XSF is not a political organization, and we don't want to defend such a position, right? :)

But here we are, probably already spent more time discussing it than it would take to make the PR

just because I’m not on a system where xeps is cloned!

otherwise it would already be done by now :)

I like primary/replica as replacement in general, but I don’t know (yet) about the specific occurences to know if it fits in all our cases

I can take a look in a minute, just need to wrap up another task

MattJ: I totally agree it makes no sense whatsoever for the XSF to go against that trend.

It is really sad to see that doing nothing has become a despicable political position that will put you under fire. But well, those are the times, and the XSF is not the place to fight the language wars.

when checking with some good folks about primary/replica, I was sent: https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/01/splunk_unbiased_documentation_guide/ https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/StyleGuide/current/StyleGuide/Inclusivity

I’m just going to forward this here without further comment (except "good folks"), I haven’t looked into it deeply yet

There's quite a few of these lists floating around with different terminology, though from a spectator's view it seems that master/slave and blacklist/whitelist are thought to be the most egregious.

The Splunk guide is somewhat broader than I've seen in the past.

MattJ, Thanks for doing that PR. I could quibble about some of your choices (thank heavens we only have a primary bedroom and not replica ones), but I'm happy with this as-is. Do we want to explicitly adopt this as a general policy for the XSF, and if so, do we want to raise this at Board level?

is it worth doing a "singular they" pass while we are at it?

the master/slave and whitelist/blacklist is afaik quite uncommon in our specs, since they are a bit outside of the domain vocabulary, but updating pronouns to singular they may be a bit more involved

I think I’ve reviewed all the changes and only found two places (left a comment) where I think it subtly changes the meaning.

Although Primary-Replica is quite confusing in the 289 cases, as that’s not really what this is doing (one could argue that it wasn’t really doing master-slave either, I suppose).

we might reconsider the Romeo & Juliet thing as well with more neutral names

Sam and Max :-)

extraordinarily good suggestions

but no i'm fine with romeo and juliet in the examples

I, too, am personally, but I *have* already heard the feedback that it’s a tad dark and "not a good example of successful communication, is it?".

Hah.

It’s not Romeo and Juliet that we use, is it?

that actually a good take. but i don’t think we should go and change old XEPs in that regard

It’s arbitrary characters from Shakespeare, of whom those are two examples.

> we might reconsider the Romeo & Juliet thing as well with more neutral names Max und Moritz?

Kev, indeed, I only heard that feedback about romeo and juliet specifically though. From someone not familiar with the fact that others are also used.

mdosch, what is good about daniels suggestion is that they’re pretty gender neutral

JK anyway. As MM are pretty dark too.

very :)

Sam and Max might be somewhat more still in copyright than Bill Shakespeare ;)

I don’t get the Sam and Max reference then

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_%26_Max

If I think about Max und Moritz and Struwwelpeter I guess no one would give such books to children nowadays. 😂

oh well we certainly can't use Sam and Max then, police are bad you know ?

just use A and B

I always use Twelfth Night characters because that's probably my favorite of the comedies (but I have no real preference, it doesn't need to be consistent in my mind)

dwd, thanks. For the record I picked "primary bedroom" because that seems to be what the estate agencies are moving to ("primary" or "principal"). I've never heard either term used in reality though :)

Hi everyone. The problem with replacing certain words with something different is that someone is gonna find the "new" words also irrespective/racist/whatever. It is a never ending game I would not even bother to play. my 2 cents

bean, I'm sure that someone will find the term "primary" elitist, and maybe in some far future "replica" will have bad connotations for clones or androids or something. But "slave" has clear meanings right now worth avoiding.

Mmmm. These things tend to look like bullying to me. If you give in, that gives them power over you.

I find the censorship of language not historically racist problematic, but hey ho.

dwd, the problem is: where do you draw the line? Someone is always gonna find the new words" unfit/racist/etc

(The history of ‘master’ is not its meaning in the ‘slave’ context - but master/slave is harder to argue that slave doesn’t have connotations)

The most obvious case, for me, is "whitelist/blacklist", which has the intentional meaning that white is universally good and black universally undesirable. "master/slave" I'll go along with happily enough, as I understand how those can be upsetting. "master copy" and "first-class" and things I'm going to have more problems with.

When someone starts suggesting that Unis should give out a PSc because MSc is offensise I’m going to start grumbling :)

Kev, Right, the "master" in "master/slave" isn't the problem I worry about. The notion that the "slave" is a reduced-capacity entity which explicitly has no free will is undertsandably more problematic.

Something something "master" and "apprenticeship"

I am not a linguist, but it is my opinion that the whole "bad words issue" arise from the fact that certain people love to take words out of context. Whitelist/blacklist makes perfect sense and isn't racist if used in a context where people are not involved

bean, Why does it make perfect sense?

The rationale I linked in the PR is good enough for me. I'm not fanatical about these changes, I think they're a small improvement that was worth the relatively small amount of effort.

I understand if others feel the changes weren't necessary, I wouldn't really understand actual opposition to the change if the substitute wording is equivalent

dwd, for the same reason stop lights are red and green, it makes sense cause it is a color convention

Amazingly English usually has very many ways to say the same thing

bean, And note that many of our access control lists (allow and block) are explicitly referencing people.

Red/Green for traffic lights is about the worst possible choice that could have been made, of course ;)

bean, Ah, so "red" as a signal for stop, danger, etc is not an arbitrary choice, but based on the colour of blood and its corresponding ability to stand out to human eyes. (As Kev says, the choice of green as the "opposite" is somewhat unfortunate).

It'd be a pretty low hanging fruit to change black/whitelist to block-/allowlist though

Blacklist’s origin is not race-related, FWIW, and I don’t believe (but haven’t verified) that white-good, black-bad has racial originals. But I can certainly see that if you say “White stuff is good and Black stuff is bad” it would be better to pick other terms.

Even if bean is right and it's just people taking things out of context (it's not, there's a lot of historical significance here too, but let's just say they are for the point of argument): it still doesn't matter. If some people take words out of context when just reading along and it hurts them or saddens them, and we can make a minor intentional change to our language and it doesn't hurt us to do so, then we should do it. It's that simple. Of course, in rality, historical context and the way these things have been used *does* matter, so all the more reason to make the change.

Taking things out of context hurts and saddens me, I demand you stop talking!!!11!111eleventy /s

Zash: You’re not the first person to demand that of me.

Kev, Yes, indeed. Comes from, I think, ancient greek politics, ultimately. But nevertheless, it carries connotations which align awkwardly with race.

Like, let's take out of the current context and make it abstract. If in your language there's a word that's a swear word or something that's very shocking and you don't want children to know what it means, and there's a word in english that's spelled almost the same and sounds *just* like it, wouldn't it be worth changing it to a synonym to save a few people the shock of stumbling upon that in a document? That seems like a perfectly sane thing to do, even though it's not offensive in English.

Kev, Or possibly light versus darkness, via religious interpretations.

dwd, I am colorblind, does this makes stop lights discriminatory?

Sun, day, light vs night, darkness etc?

bean, That's not the analogous question here. If we could trivially switch traffic lights to be Red/Blue, would this be less discriminatory for you?

I always think that you need some sort of racist thinking to see all those 'racism'. In my innocent thinking master, blacklist and whitelist were not racist and it never occurred to me that you could make this a racist thing.

dwd, maybe it would be better for me, but I am sure it wouldn't be for someone else. My point is: where do we draw the line? Cause changing things because they hurt someone sensibility sets a strong precedent

mdosch, Sure. But you might feel differently if your great-grandparents were actual slaves and your parents had to campaign for decades for equal rights just because they happened to be black and not white.

mdosch, replace master/slave with arier/jew

it may be of lesser significance if you’re from, I don’t know who wasn’t hit as much by the holocaust fallout, maybe sudan?, but it surely is significant in europe.

Yah, if you haven't had something racist shouted across the street at you and been worried for your safety or been refused a seat at a restaurant or what not I'm sure you wouldn't notice that the terms are harmful. Ignorance is only a defense until you've been informed though, then it's on you to do your research and understand why these terms hurt people. After that, we can have a meaningful discussion.

bean, OK, so, how is anyone inconvenienced by using "allow list" and "block list"?

> mdosch, replace master/slave with arier/jew I didn't talk about master/slave. I mean renaming master branches were no slave is involved.

> bean, OK, so, how is anyone inconvenienced by using "allow list" and "block list"? why not just follow a standard that people have been using for decades and that was never previously considered "racist" out of the blue?

dwd, that doesn't answer my question. Where do we draw the line? allowlist and blocklist are fine by me, but like I said I am almost 100% sure someone else is not gonna be ok with them ✏

i think bean means the slippery slope fallacy, which makes sense in this case

^exactly

What makes you think it was only recently considered racist? Maybe it was only recently that people felt they had enough power and voice to make change and the racist thing was that no one has been listening to them for <since forever>.

BASSGOD, "fallacy" - clue's in the name.

because if we have to rename this, qre we gonna rename it every so often?

Does it matter?

BASSGOD, No, it doesn't follow.

sorry, i didn't mean to put fallacy there

I don’t think whitelist/blacklist are racist terms. That’s not where they come from. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t think that messages of “White good, Black bad” are at least unfortunate and worth reconsidering.

BASSGOD, And yet you accurately did.

I just don't get why white and black list is also racist now. You could interpret racist meaning into it of course, but I think it doesn't originate from skin colors.

Maybe because I always think of master as 'Meister' which is just job hierarchy/grade.

Kev: :-) two people thinking the same at the same time.

mdosch, Sure. As I said, I understand the problematic term in "master/slave" isn't "master".

stp: > I just don't get why white and black list is also racist now. You could interpret racist meaning into it of course, but I think it doesn't originate from skin colors. That's my point. If you don't think racist you don't put racist meaning into it.

Can something not be undesirable without being racist?

Right, and it may be different for different cultures, languages, etc. but if we refuse to make change just because it doesn't necessarily lead to issues in every single culture then literally nothing will ever change and we'll exclude those groups of people.

I'm fine if some people don't agree with the need for the wording changes, that's ok. But I see no logic behind opposition to such minor modifications. We have better things to do.

MattJ, +1

If you go with allowlist denylist blocklist passlist, and primary, main, secondarz, replica, subordinate, initiator, requestor, target, responder, controller, host, device, worker, proxy, leader, follower, director, performer you are also consitent with the new linux kernel terminology!

FTR: I have no strong feelings about changing terms. I just expressed my irritation about putting racist meanings in some (to me) innocent terms like blacklist/whitelist.

es_bbb: there's the word "leader" in there ;-)

That's only burned for Germans. 😂

Uw...

and they should just deal with it (saying that being a german)

we deserve all the s* we can get about that.

:-D

not very long ago it was cool to despise the "leader" in the USA too

I agree with mdosch , people need to grow a spine, not everything is an insult aimed at you, in fact it's better to go through life assuming nothing is

Anyways, the main take away should be "listen to the people that are affected by your language choices first, then after listening you can have a real conversation, don't just go argue in a room largely full of white men of privilege". If people can't do that first then I don't think we need to continue this conversation and people should just get over it that words, their meanings, and their connotations will change.

that said, I certainly don't care about it one way or the other

mdosch, i forgot the proper term for this but there is an effect of being more emotionally distant to words if you are not a native speaker. like swearing in a different (non native) language seems less 'bad' to us

which might be a reason why you don’t associate racist meaning to master/slave terms

Daniel: does the same apply to bilinguists?

dunno

Daniel: True. In english I swear significantly more than in my mother tongue.

lol maybe i need to learn a 3rd language to understand

go for finnish

Traditionally, the idea of language determining action was a quite German-specific thing. Seems the world is finally convinced.

it’s a nice language and they have their own share of interesting cusswords

i waa thinking either German or russian

Oops ✏

Damn, this is XSF not Schrödingers.

🙂

Ei saa peittää.

besides racist, offensive, English is a very violant language. Like "kill the process", etc. I suggest using a different one :-P

less english than rather the folks who built the original tools I guess

I remember one developer told me he wasn’t keen on using git because the idea of having a ‘blame’ command was unhelpful.

I also think that `blame` isn’t quite ideally named

That's way older though. At least CVS.

`hg annotate`, but noooo, git "won"

That one always bothered me a bit too

I think I simultaneously hold the opinion that “grief, that’s not a reason not to use the tool” and “why would you pick blame in the first place?” (which doesn’t originate with Git).

Kev, AFAIK, `git annotate` is a synonym, but that argument started with svn.

huh, TIL, git annotate

good to know, though I would’ve preferred `trace` or something

Wow.

I feel like a terribly old grump when reading you guys 🙂