Replacing master/slave terminology

Nate Coraor nate at bx.psu.edu
Wed Jun 10 15:48:19 EDT 2020


Hi all,

I'd like to propose that an effort be made to replace master/slave
terminology in MIT and Heimdal implementations at some future milestone. I
suspect this would be a fairly large undertaking, but hopefully it could be
done incrementally and in a largely backwards compatible way. For example,
ISC BIND now accepts "primary" and "secondary" as synonyms for "master" and
"slave" in configuration files and documentation.

I looked for a prior discussion on this, tracked issues/bugs, etc. but
didn't find anything, so I apologize if this has been brought up before. I
am aware that this has been a contentious issue with other projects and I
am certainly not trying to cause any disagreement, but avoiding these terms
is a small piece of fostering inclusivity in the world of free and open
source software. I know that "master" and "slave" are terms in long use in
computer science in general and Kerberos in specific, but their direct
connection to the institution of slavery should relegate their use where it
can be helped.

Thanks,
--nate


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