Mozilla gives 15k to remove "Slave" from build bot documentation

[Rastrelly]

Pure idiocy. Pure. Let's also remove the term "bad" from all the documents in the world? What the hell are they smoking? Maybe they'd actually give those money to cancer research? Or actual anti-slavery campaign? I know they are doing charity already, but WTF, seriously?! You guys in the US are actually crazy or what? Someone thinks that device on slave port is an actual slave? I... I cannot wrap my head around it. It's beyond lunacy. It's actually harmful. It's a fucking direction to Orwellland, but it is even initialized NOT by Evil Government (c).

 

[runic knight]

Well this is a stupid waste of money in the name of... what, exactly? The term discomforts some, so it needs to be changed? I don't get it, master/slave relates to terminals, which haven't been that common, so changing it now seems like an excessive effort to accomplish nothing of value but flushing money down the drain.

Damn it, this is going to end up like microsoft's naming shenanigans again, isn't it? Where an establish name for various components is altered in some way to make it different, while merely making it more confusing. MAC address/physical address?

Hell, even if it works, it will only either breed confusion if someone used to the new term has to look anyone in the history of the computer term, or it will be revealed to be totally worthless as they have to remind people the previous term in order to prevent such a confusion, thereby rendering the bubblewrap protection of those apparently upset by the old term entirely worthless.

 

[munx13]

It is implied that they need this money to keep the browser updated and running, and I have to assume most people are donating their money for this purpose. Then they decide to spend thousands on something as meaningless and wasteful as this. Nothing wrong technically, as its now their money, however still dishonest.

They actually seem to be quite transparent with what they'll use their donations for. The blog post shows it's supporting projects that Mozilla uses or relies upon, which falls in line with what they said they'll use donations for [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Donate#How_will_my_donation_be_used.3F].

So it's not even dishonest from them. In fact they're using it exactly the ways they said they would.

"In general, resources are dedicated to promoting openness, innovation and opportunity on the Internet in ways that will benefit everyone."
They just threw money away to rename some technical terms in some documents. This benefits nothing and no one.

 

[kris40k]

As a Dom, I'm offended that they are implying that "master" and "slave" are offensive terms.

Rabble, rabble, rabble!

 

[Vigormortis]

So it's official then? Context is dead and cultural baggage must be applied to everything?

Good to know.

Still, it's Mozilla's money. They're free to spend it how they wish.

Their money, they can spend it how they like. Don't think it matters if you get behind it or not.

I see a small problem here.

Spoiler

A small problem with easy solutions:

Don't like what they're doing with the money? Stop donating.

Like what they're doing with the money? Keep donating.

 

[Fappy]

There's a distinct difference between shareholders and donors. If you don't link it, stop donating.

 

[Barbas]

There is no issue here. 15K seems like a pointless amount to spend on that, but it's their money and, as for donations, those are entirely optional. Don't like it, don't donate - there are several good alternate browsers to use.

 

[Evil Moo]

So I take it they're going to change the name Buildbot and every other 'bot' as well, what with the word robot effectively meaning slave as well. Or are they just going to be wasting money on arbitrary subsets of slave terminology?

 

[munx13]

So it's official then? Context is dead and cultural baggage must be applied to everything?

Good to know.

Still, it's Mozilla's money. They're free to spend it how they wish.

Their money, they can spend it how they like. Don't think it matters if you get behind it or not.

I see a small problem here.

Spoiler

A small problem with easy solutions:

Don't like what they're doing with the money? Stop donating.

Like what they're doing with the money? Keep donating.

I'm not sure how you came to a conclusion that I thought donating was mandatory.

"In general, resources are dedicated to promoting openness, innovation and opportunity on the Internet in ways that will benefit everyone."
They just threw money away to rename some technical terms in some documents. This benefits nothing and no one.

The funny part is the fact you stopped that quote there, rather than quoting the whole thing where they say they will put it back into projects for Mozilla (would quote it myself but on phone) which falls in line with what they're doing.

Yeah, they didn't make money to put it back into the project, they just spent it. On a problem that didn't exist.

 

[Timeless Lavender]

This reminds me of psychology where there were scientific words that the general public used incorrectly for social and cultural context. Words like 'moron' and 'idiot' are actual scientific words that hold too much cultural baggage to be used professionally.

At the end of the day, it is their money and their right to spend it on this.

 

[Areloch]

Few things come to mind reading this:

1) This is the very definition of the concept of 'Feels before Reals'. Master/Slave has a perfectly technical use and doesn't imply or denote any human slavery was involved. Ditching all context to change some words around because it could make someone somewhere feel bad is NOT something to be encouraged.

2) While the people saying "Just don't donate" are entirely correct, it still feels like the people that did before this action should be allowed to at least voice their opinion on the subject, since, you know, their money was involved in some capacity. They're free to stop donating going forward to be sure, but I think it's fair that they can voice their disapproval pertaining to the money they already had donated going to something they disagree with.

 

[Major_Tom]

So they will only remove the word "slave", but leave "master"? As a Vault Dweller, I find that offensive.

 

[munx13]

Yeah, they didn't make money to put it back into the project, they just spent it. On a problem that didn't exist.

So what you're saying is it's their money and they can spend it how they like?

I never said it was not their money, in fact, the first comment I made was how technically they are free to do with it as they want. The problem that I find here is that so much of their funding relies on donations, which in this case were (poorly) spent on purposes that werent mentioned or implied.

Well took you long enough but you finally got there.

not sure I want to continue this anymoe now

 

[NiPah]

Their money, they can spend it how they like. Don't think it matters if you get behind it or not.

Pretty sure no one was lining up to sue Firefox over their use of donated funds, but the fact that people are against practices such as this is meaningful.
I mean the fact that they spent 15k changing the programming language means they'll do just about anything for cheap PR.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Their money, they can spend it how they like. Don't think it matters if you get behind it or not.

It does seem like a waste of time though. Whatever their reasoning, surely $15k could be better spent than altering accepted technical terms.

It reminds me of when Oakley stopped using the term Asian Fit to describe their Asian Fit glasses. Fine, you think it's racist, but it's a term the entire optics industry uses and now nobody knows what your new terms mean (they went back to using Asian Fit after a couple of years). I doubt Mozilla will have quite that problem, but I bet they will still say slave/master when they're talking about code internally.

 

[Zombie_Fish]

$15,000 is 3% of the total money Mozilla awarded to open source projects this time round. These points are already considered by the MOSS Selection Committee:[footnote]https://wiki.mozilla.org/MOSS#Selection_Criteria[/footnote]

Will this grant make a significant impact on the project?
Is the level of funding appropriate for the task to be accomplished?

Chances are the Selection Committee saw it as a low risk funding that could yield some benefits regardless of whether they agree with use of the term slave or not. After all, the money is also going towards making "improvements so Buildbot works better in the Amazon EC2 cloud."

Also, this isn't the first time this discussion has turned up either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master/slave_%28technology%29#Appropriateness_of_usage

Personally I'm more disgusted at the $75,000 going towards Mercurial, but that's just my preference for Git shining through.

EDIT: Added point about the MOSS Selection Committee's criteria.

 

[Vigormortis]

I'm not sure how you came to a conclusion that I thought donating was mandatory.

Uh....did I say that you did?

You implied some people might not like where their donated money was going. I presented an easy solution. Don't donate.

How you took that to mean I implied you thought donating was mandatory is beyond me. Sorry.

 

[cthulhuspawn82]

Do we know the proper gender pronoun that build bot prefers, I dont want to offend it. Also, does anyone know if the Firefox mascot identifies at otherkin?

 

[crimson5pheonix]

Well that's a silly waste of money. Mayhaps it could be spent better?

 

[MysticSlayer]

After all, this is something that would need to be changed eventually anyway, assuming we ever create artificial intelligence or partially virtualized biological intelligence, so we may as well get it out of the way now.

Would you mind explaining the significance of AI to this, because I'm not seeing the connection.