Mozilla Spends 15,000 Dollars To Remove The Word "Slave" From Documentation In Buildbot

[LAwLz]

 

A few days ago Mozilla announced their first ever set of awards to projects Mozilla relies on. The awards are money that goes towards different purposes. Some of the money will go towards interesting and beneficial things, such as 25,000 dollars to Discourse which will be used to develop email services in their software (with the hopes of replacing mailing lists).

 

One of the awards however has caused some controversy. Buildbot, the open source project Mozilla uses to automatically build software is going to receive 15,000 dollars and will be used to "remove the term 'slave from all documentation, APIs and tests".

To be fair, the money is also going to make Buildbot work better with Amazon EC2 cloud, but that comes second.

 

It seems like the word "slaves" will be replaced by "replicants" or some other form of it. Since Buildbot uses the master/slave model, the word "slave" is used all throughout the documentation and code (example here). Rewriting that will be a fairly large project.

 

 

This is not the first time Mozilla is fighting for political correctness. A few months ago an anonymous Mozilla developer complained on Reddit about how Christie Koehler was "batshit insane and permanently offended at everything". Shortly after those posts Mozilla's CEO made a public statement threatening to fire the anonymous employee if he was found.

It seems like Mozilla is working very hard for political correctness ever since their previous CEO was forced to step down last year after it was revealed that he had donated 1000 dollars to Proposition 8 (anti-gay marriage bill) a few years earlier.

 

 

 

If you are a donator to Mozilla, how do you feel about this? Do you think your money is going towards a good cause or do you think that your money is being wasted?

Are you a developer and if so, are you careful with your words in order to minimize the risk of someone getting offended by your code and documentation?

 

 

 

Source: Mozilla's Blog

[thekeemo]

A slave is a slave no changing that

That is like calling actual slaves indentured servants

[EmeraldKiwi]

Well, it's for a good cause I suppose, but I think Mozilla could have spent 15 million dollars on something more important than political correctness. Improving their web browser anyone?

EDIT:

Ignore all that. It's 15 THOUSAND, not million. Makes more sense.

[Kobathor]

More PC bullshit, soon we're gonna be UK 2.0.

[DildorTheDecent]

This is pretty hilarious though:

 

This is not the first time Mozilla is fighting for political correctness. A few months ago an anonymous Mozilla developer complained on Reddit about how Christie Koehler was "batshit insane and permanently offended at everything". Shortly 

[LancerBG]

the power of bitching and moaning. 

[Centurius]

Well, it's for a good cause I suppose, but I think Mozilla could have spent 15 million dollars on something more important than political correctness. Improving their web browser anyone?

Three zeroes too much, it's only 15 thousand.

[EmeraldKiwi]

Three zeroes too much, it's only 15 thousand.

Oh. That's my fault. Completely misread that. 15,000 dollars is much more reasonable. You can see why I was kind of confused as to why they would spend 15 million on it though.

[AresKrieger]

Um ok, it's still called a master slave system, why do we care what the PC lunatics think, they're just ads after all

[Emanuel_M]

You can't erase history. Slave will have its definitions.

[ICantThinkOfAnyGoodName]

This is just stupid. Not only is it useless, it will also confuse people who are used to the use of the term slave in this context.

[asiancorruption]

Welp. PC police people are getting to us. Soon there will be no more 9/11 twist videos

[TetraSky]

This is just ridiculous. Who is it that was offended by this and complained?

[Fetzie]

You can't erase history. Slave will have its definitions.

 

The definition of slave in this case is nothing to do with human history:

 

The master/slave relationship in IT is based on one piece of equipment controlling another. For example, it was possible to put two storage devices on the same IDE channel (cable). The primary device was defined as the "master" (usually on the connector at the end of the cable) and the second as the "slave", which was attached to the connector half-way along the cable (you moved a jumper to switch between the two). The "master" device would tell the secondary drive when it was ok to transfer data to the computer (as you could only have one drive running on the channel at any one time).

 

That is the "slave" definition the documentation talks about. It has nothing to do with the exploitation of captured and indentured people throughout the millenia.

[Bob Jim]

More PC bullshit, soon we're gonna be UK 2.0.

Wtf do you mean? Arrogant Americans these days, loving Donald's policies are we?

[Legion]

This is the dumbest fucking thing I've seen from Mozilla in a long time

 

Slave on its own isn't offensive it is a term used to describe the position in a relationship this was handy in an IT environment  because it was instantly recognizable to anyone with a decent understanding of the English language. Master/Slave relationship, without much understanding you could hazard a guess how it works.

 

Next we will have to change the browser to happyfox because some fire victim will be triggered. 

 

A lot of women I know hate the word bird when used to talk about girls, maybe we should petition Mozilla to rename their email client to ThunderHappy too

 

On second thought Happy might trigger all the sad pandas out there.

 

Mozilla 2020 : Now introducing A Browser, and An Email Client.

A browser no longer features favorites because it makes all the other web developers who's pages you don't favorite feel sad and depressed, thankfully they can take out trolling insurance to afford the counselling they will need.

 

EDIT: The main reason I'm pissed off is this money could have been used to actually improve firefox or pretty much anything else. Replacing a word for no reason is such a waste of resources .

[Emanuel_M]

The definition of slave in this case is nothing to do with human history:

 

The master/slave relationship in IT is based on one piece of equipment controlling another. For example, it was possible to put two storage devices on the same IDE channel (cable). The primary device was defined as the "master" (usually on the connector at the end of the cable) and the second as the "slave", which was attached to the connector half-way along the cable (you moved a jumper to switch between the two). The "master" device would tell the secondary drive when it was ok to transfer data to the computer (as you could only have one drive running on the channel at any one time).

 

That is the "slave" definition the documentation talks about. It has nothing to do with the exploitation of captured and indentured people throughout the millenia.

yea I do know that that is why I said definitions since there are many meanings for the word slave.

[zMeul]

[techswede]

God fucking damn it.. That cash could've been spent far better anywhere else.

[Castdeath97]

Don't slave devices become master every once in a while, doesn't sound offensive even for the device if it had feelings (which it doesn't).

[Fetzie]

yea I do know that that is why I said definitions since there are many meanings for the word slave.

 

Well, the definition in this case is the one that I presented and therefore it doesn't need to be changed in the manual. And maybe the SJWs that thought otherwise should type "master/slave IT" into Wikipedia and learn something instead of making companies waste money. Or maybe, if it matters so much to them, THEY could foot the bill.

[Castdeath97]

God fucking damn it.. That cash could've been spent far better anywhere else.

Yeah like getting a 10000 pizza boxes, who doesn't want pizza?

[Kobathor]

Wtf do you mean? Arrogant Americans these days, loving Donald's policies are we?

In the UK muslims are trying to legislate the banning of any denouncing of their religion. That wouldn't be a problem, but it's almost being voted on. You're so PC there that it's crazy. 

 

The mainstream media in the US is totally PC, but it's not at the level of the UK yet (where every citizen and their dog is trying to not offend people.) 

[Trixanity]

If the term 'slave' is to be banned from the tech industry... Then will it also get banned in the BDSM community? I'm sure they'll come up with hilarious alternate names.

[Kherm]

Yep, batshit insane sounds about right.