Many technology companies are changing their terminology to avoid words that can be considered racist, such as master/slave and blacklist/whitelist. Linus Torvalds announced that Linux is joining the companies that are switching to the new terminology, but the replacements are not certain yet. The proposal was made by the Linux kernel maintainer Dan Williams on July 4th and Linus Torvalds approved it. The new and more neutral and inclusive language is also added to the proposal.
Neutral and inclusive language
The Linux team is asked to choose the most appropriate terms from a list provided in the proposal.
Master/Slave alternatives in the proposal:
- primary/secondary
- main/replica or subordinate
- initiator/target
- requester/responder
- controller/device
- host/worker or proxy
- leader/follower
- director/performer
Blacklist/Whitelist alternatives in the proposal:
- denylist/allowlist
- blocklist/passlist
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