Hi Edward, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I’ll reply inline. > - Some of the terms proposed are not industry standard and may potentially > cause significant issue for non-english speakers.
I actually believe making these changes will _improve_ the clarity for non-english speakers. “Whitelist” and “blacklist” confer no inherent reason to mean allow and deny other than connotative biases. “Allow” and “deny” explicitly indicate the verb that is happening. Another example is branch naming. “Masters” don’t have “branches”. “Trunks” do. These terms make _more_ sense for a non-English speaker than the current terms. > > - For each change that is made can we guarantee that we will not lose > clarity of meaning, and then have revert the change down the line if the > change causes a drop in usage. I don’t expect the community will opt to change the new terms back to ones with negative connotations in the future. If there is discussion about it, this thread will provide good historical context for why the decision was made to change it, just as the mailing list discussions do for other code changes. > > - Of what percentage of people is this truly an issue for and what > percentage isn't. Any change that has the potential to cause a major split > in the community, there must be as close as possible to a majority, and not > just from those that are vocal and active on the mailing lists. > Disscustions on other groups are turning toxic, and in some cases are > potentially leading to the collapse of these projects where these changes > are being implemented with what appears to be without the agreement of a > signifficant chunk of the community. > In my perspective this should be an issue for the entire community. Being able to identify an issue that directly affects another person but not one’s self is the definition of privilege. If I can look at how the use of these words in someone’s daily life or career impacts them negatively, when the change would not harm me at all, I see that as a failure on my part. I understand the desire to hear from the silent majority, but active participation and discussion on the mailing list is the exact measure described by the Apache process for participation in the community. Those who speak here are the ones who will have a voice. > - From a personal perspective, I sit on the autism spectrum and have grown > up with people using words that are very offensive and have hurt me badly. > Instead of having these words as offensive and untouchable. Myself and > others have instead made these words our own and made them lose the > negative connotations they have. As such, I do find the current > disscustions deeply alarming and feels like they start to border into the > realm of censorship. > I think it’s admirable that you have responded to negative circumstances in that way. I also recognize that not everyone has that opportunity. If we can take these actions as a community to improve the experience for others, I am in favor of that. > - One final point (and potentially controversial), A good chunk of the > wording that is proposed to be changed. Is being done so on the > "modern"/"street" definition of these words and not the actual definition. > Language should change and evolve to introduce clarity, but right now does > this change improve the clarity across the engineering sector and I believe > it won't. I’ll paraphrase Emily Kager here with “developers spend an inordinate amount of time and energy arguing about the meaning and semantics of variable and method names, but pretend exclusionary terms are meaningless.” [1] If we can expend that much energy deciding if a method creates vs. builds vs. forms an imaginary concept like a LibraryFrameworkWrapperDecorator, I refuse to concede that we can and in fact should do so with the terms that actually affect our community members’ lives. [1] https://twitter.com/EmilyKager/status/1271102865889734656 <https://twitter.com/EmilyKager/status/1271102865889734656> Andy LoPresto alopre...@apache.org alopresto.apa...@gmail.com He/Him PGP Fingerprint: 70EC B3E5 98A6 5A3F D3C4 BACE 3C6E F65B 2F7D EF69 > On Jun 17, 2020, at 6:43 PM, Edward Armes <edward.ar...@gmail.com> wrote: > > This is a difficult issue and causes no small amount of friction every > time. I'm personally against this for the following reassons: > > - Some of the terms proposed are not industry standard and may potentially > cause significant issue for non-english speakers. > > - For each change that is made can we guarantee that we will not lose > clarity of meaning, and then have revert the change down the line if the > change causes a drop in usage. > > - Of what percentage of people is this truly an issue for and what > percentage isn't. Any change that has the potential to cause a major split > in the community, there must be as close as possible to a majority, and not > just from those that are vocal and active on the mailing lists. > Disscustions on other groups are turning toxic, and in some cases are > potentially leading to the collapse of these projects where these changes > are being implemented with what appears to be without the agreement of a > signifficant chunk of the community. > > - From a personal perspective, I sit on the autism spectrum and have grown > up with people using words that are very offensive and have hurt me badly. > Instead of having these words as offensive and untouchable. Myself and > others have instead made these words our own and made them lose the > negative connotations they have. As such, I do find the current > disscustions deeply alarming and feels like they start to border into the > realm of censorship. > > - One final point (and potentially controversial), A good chunk of the > wording that is proposed to be changed. Is being done so on the > "modern"/"street" definition of these words and not the actual definition. > Language should change and evolve to introduce clarity, but right now does > this change improve the clarity across the engineering sector and I believe > it won't. > > Edward > > > On Thu, 18 Jun 2020, 01:11 Andy LoPresto, <alopre...@apache.org> wrote: > >> I am a proponent of making this change and also using allow/deny list, >> meddler-in-the-middle, etc. >> >> Here is a blog [1] with easy instructions for executing the change in git, >> although I don’t know if there is any Apache-integration specific changes >> we would also need. >> >> [1] >> https://www.hanselman.com/blog/EasilyRenameYourGitDefaultBranchFromMasterToMain.aspx >> >> Andy LoPresto >> alopre...@apache.org >> alopresto.apa...@gmail.com >> He/Him >> PGP Fingerprint: 70EC B3E5 98A6 5A3F D3C4 BACE 3C6E F65B 2F7D EF69 >> >>> On Jun 17, 2020, at 3:06 PM, Joe Witt <joe.w...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>> I suspect it would be fairly easy to make this change. We do, I think, >>> have whitelist/blacklist in there somewhere but im not sure how involved. >>> >>> On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 3:04 PM Tony Kurc <tk...@apache.org> wrote: >>> >>>> All, >>>> I've seen the discussion started on other projects [1][2], so I wanted >> to >>>> kick off a discussion to determine whether this is something nifi could >>>> look at too. Allen Wittenauer's post to yetus captures the why and some >> of >>>> the how, so rather than copy and pasting, you can take a look at what >> he's >>>> done. Thoughts? >>>> >>>> Tony >>>> >>>> 1. >>>> >>>> >> https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/rd38afa9fb6c0dcd77d1a677f1152b7398b3bda93c9106b3393149d10%40%3Cdev.yetus.apache.org%3E >>>> 2. >>>> >>>> >> https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/r0825eec0c84296bdab7cf898a987f06355443241ca02b2aaa51d3ef9%40%3Cdev.accumulo.apache.org%3E >>>> >> >>
