On 10 Jul 2020, at 23:51, Bill Cole wrote:
"Terribly offended" is not what I've heard from anyone but the issue
has been raised by Black colleagues a few times in multiple contexts,
as Yet Another Minor Annoyance in a world stuffed full of such little
things.
Reminds me of left-handed people back when I grew up. In my time
children would use chairs with integrated tables that would be fit for
_either_ right- or left-handed people. Since there were more
right-handed children, left-handed people would have to be more creative
to adapt.
So far we know:
* Terms such as blacklist are a minor annoyance
* There's no evidence of "how many people have thought less of SA"
because of the use of the term "blacklist"
* The change has a very non-zero impact _everywhere_ the software is
deployed, as explained by other contributors to this ML
If you want a direct first-hand explication, hunt down the recent
extended rant on Twitter by Jackie Singh (@find_evil) triggered by the
suggestion that the Black Hat conference was considering a name change
and the blowback from that.
Sure, are you talking about this?
https://twitter.com/find_evil/status/1279945071371128834 – "The only
person on that list who looks anything like me is the head of infosec at
Fb"
In here she posts a poll asking whether you would apply to be part of a
board composing by people that don't look like you
– https://twitter.com/find_evil/status/1279948068411052045
I can't answer for everybody of course, but I would not care how the
current members of a group I wanted to join look. I have been part of
many groups that contained people that did not look like me
– professional and otherwise. Up to that point in the thread, it
seems to me as someone looking for excuses. If I missed something,
please point me to it.
If I continue to look at her tweets, I find examples such as this:
https://twitter.com/find_evil/status/1281735488437727233 – she seems
surprised that someone would want to choose compatible people to work
with. I don't know her or the context, and it is not my place to pass
judgement, but I sincerely hope that whomever is in charge has better
justification for this change than this lady's tweet rant.
I do not know the rules under which ASF and SAP operate, but this thread
is evidence that the position you are defending is far from widely
shared, and to me, looks very poorly justified.
Future software? Sure. Get rid of anything remotely offensive _the next
time around_. Start by not using Assassin in the name, Apache in your
organization and not mentioning any colors or university degrees. For
existing, deployed, critical code? Don't change things to win cookie
points.
Best regards
-lem
