Alternative terminology for "slave"

[clarkbreyman]

Please consider alternative terminology for "slave" (similar to django/django#2692). "Collaborator" seems a possible choice, albeit long. "Worker" is also a possible choice.

[Galser]

You seriously? master-slave in the same way as in database is a well-known terminology, why bother around with changing? Although, "worker" maybe a good choice. But in the first place, everybody had already a good laugh about guys from django, including the very thread you used here as an example.

Please, please somebody explain to me that this is a joke.

Collaborator - for example - also can mean for somebody a person who is teaming up with enemy helping to conquer You native country. How about that ?

[clarkbreyman]

Yes, I am making a serious request - one that I hope the maintainers would consider. Language choice can be a small but important step in making our profession more welcoming to groups that have been historically excluded.

You make a good point on collaborator. Worker is probably a better term.

[heyman]

I'm all for making our profession, as well as the open source community, more welcoming. However, I really don't see why anyone would be offended by the use of the term slave. To me it describes a relationship between two entities (in this case two or more different running computer programs), and it's obviously a horrible thing when applied to humans, but not at all when we talk about computer processes.

With that said, english is not my native language, and I realise I have a different historical context than people from US, so if people are offended by the term slave, I wouldn't mind changing the terminology to "worker" (if someone would do the job), since I think worker works just as well as slave.

[clarkbreyman]

Thanks Jonatan. I'll look at putting together a pull request.

[cyberw]

Closing this for now. There was a (not very good) PR & some discussion a while back to adress this, but I think we wont change this any time soon. If there is ever a new terminology that is as widely known & understood as master-slave then we should have a look again.

[heyman]

Let's change the terminology to Master-Worker - or perhaps Primary-Worker - for 1.0.

[max-rocket-internet]

change the terminology to Master-Worker

Perfect. It's not too different to the current terminology, it's not offensive, I think master/worker is good 👍

[heyman]

Fixed by #1303