In response to renewed attention at the Foundation toward addressing culturally problematic language and terms often used in technical documentation and discussion, several projects have begun discussions, or made proposals, or started work along these lines.
The HBase PMC began its own discussion on private@ on June 9, 2020 with an observation of this activity and this suggestion: There is a renewed push back against classic technology industry terms that have negative modern connotations. In the case of HBase, the following substitutions might be proposed: - Coordinator instead of master - Worker instead of slave Recommendations for these additional substitutions also come up in this type of discussion: - Accept list instead of white list - Deny list instead of black list Unfortunately we have Master all over our code base, baked into various APIs and configuration variable names, so for us the necessary changes amount to a new major release and deprecation cycle. It could well be worth it in the long run. We exist only as long as we draw a willing and sufficient contributor community. It also wouldn’t be great to have an activist fork appear somewhere, even if unlikely to be successful. Relevant JIRAs are: - HBASE-12677 <https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HBASE-12677>: Update replication docs to clarify terminology - HBASE-13852 <https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HBASE-13852>: Replace master-slave terminology in book, site, and javadoc with a more modern vocabulary - HBASE-24576 <https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HBASE-24576>: Changing "whitelist" and "blacklist" in our docs and project In response to this proposal, a member of the PMC asked if the term 'master' used by itself would be fine, because we only have use of 'slave' in replication documentation and that is easily addressed. In response to this question, others on the PMC suggested that even if only 'master' is used, in this context it is still a problem. For folks who are surprised or lacking context on the details of this discussion, one PMC member offered a link to this draft RFC as background: https://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-knodel-terminology-00.html There was general support for removing the term "master" / "hmaster" from our code base and using the terms "coordinator" or "leader" instead. In the context of replication, "worker" makes less sense and perhaps "destination" or "follower" would be more appropriate terms. One PMC member's thoughts on language and non-native English speakers is worth including in its entirety: While words like blacklist/whitelist/slave clearly have those negative references, word master might not have the same impact for non native English speakers like myself where the literal translation to my mother tongue does not have this same bad connotation. Replacing all references for word *master *on our docs/codebase is a huge effort, I guess such a decision would be more suitable for native English speakers folks, and maybe we should consider the opinion of contributors from that ethinic minority as well? These are good questions for public discussion. We have a consensus in the PMC, at this time, that is supportive of making the above discussed terminology changes. However, we also have concerns about what it would take to accomplish meaningful changes. Several on the PMC offered support in the form of cycles to review pull requests and patches, and two PMC members offered personal bandwidth for creating and releasing new code lines as needed to complete a deprecation cycle. Unfortunately, the terms "master" and "hmaster" appear throughout our code base in class names, user facing API subject to our project compatibility guidelines, and configuration variable names, which are also implicated by compatibility guidelines given the impact of changes to operators and operations. The changes being discussed are not backwards compatible changes and cannot be executed with swiftness while simultaneously preserving compatibility. There must be a deprecation cycle. First, we must tag all implicated public API and configuration variables as deprecated, and release HBase 3 with these deprecations in place. Then, we must undertake rename and removal as appropriate, and release the result as HBase 4. One PMC member raised a question in this context included here in entirety: Are we willing to commit to rolling through the major versions at a pace that's necessary to make this transition as swift as reasonably possible? This is a question for all of us. For the PMC, who would supervise the effort, perhaps contribute to it, and certainly vote on the release candidates. For contributors and potential contributors, who would provide the necessary patches. For committers, who would be required to review and commit the relevant changes. Although there has been some initial discussion, there is no singular proposal, or plan, or set of decisions made at this time. Wrestling with this concern and the competing concerns involved with addressing it (motivation for change versus motivation for compatibility) is a task for all of us to undertake (or not) in public on dev@ and user@.
