Linux Foundation spends 20% more in 2021, highlights new LFX platform The Linux Foundation (LF) will spend over $180m in 2021, 20 per cent up on last year, and highlights the role of its new LFX platform in its just-published annual report. A non-profit formed in 2000 to support the development of the Linux kernel as well as the wider Linux and open source ecosystem, the LF is the parent …
"fixing gender and racially insensitive language rampant in code"
This, and similar, is why I stopped donating to the the Linux Foundation. I welcome suggestions on where I can donate to keep critical volunteer-run projects secure and up to date. Which is what I originally and naively thought the Linux Foundation was set up to do, hence the sad icon.
> This, and similar, is why I stopped donating to the the Linux Foundation.
The problem is not (just) that there's someone drawing a salary and spending money on scanning comments in the code for abusive language or whatever.
The problem is in *what* they consider to be abusive language.
Unfortunately they've gone the American way of "getting rid of the problem is too hard so let's just not talk about it" and using doublespeak.
The one that best illustrates the intellectual level of the instigators is, in my opinion, their crusade against "master" branches (as I understand it, because of the old fashioned practice of calling the master of a house, well, master; somehow this crowd associated that with black slavery and now apparently we can't talk about it).
Meanwhile in Europe, where lawyers are addressed as Maître in French speaking areas and craftsmen who have reached the highest level of training are officially recognised as masters, as are btw chess players and those of us who have completed a certain level of tertiary education, well, we're going to be shafted and will have to go along with what some white middle class uncultured youth in the US decides. Why, I don't know.
You'd have a much better argument except for the fact that the most common use of MASTER is in the MASTER and SLAVE relationship.
Code matters but words matter too. Unless you don't want inclusion, trying to avoid words that offend not just the fringe PC group but blacks or women in general seems like little to ask.
As a white male, I have worked for and with blacks and women, as well as white men and I didn't have a problem. When I moved to a supervisory role, I never considered asking them to call me their Master.
"You'd have a much better argument except for the fact that the most common use of MASTER is in the MASTER and SLAVE relationship."
Like the MASTER and SLAVE brake cylinders in my vehicles?
The MASTER and SLAVE clocks around here, and on my network?
Etc. etc.etc., ad nauseam.
Technical terms, when used by technical people, in a technical manner, are not inherently evil. They are the words that are used to describe something quite specific, in that context, and are used to avoid disambiguation.
People assuming that any word which might, in specific circumstances, be offensive to specific sets of people must therefore always be offensive to everybody in every context are the worst kind of censors ... they are trying to pervert the language to the point where nobody can communicate freely about anything.
"...but blacks..."
I need (no offense to those who really need things) to get on (no offense to women) a politically correct (no offense to politicians) censor campaign (no offense to countries without democracies) and I'll go all-in (again, no offense to women) and nobody (no offense to depressed people) will forget (no offense to those with Amnesia) my contributions (no offense to the less fortunate).
Thank You (no offense to people who's cultures find it offensive to say thank you).
And I assure you you'd have a much better argument if you directed your efforts at actually erasing the socioeconomic gap between the descendants of formerly enslaved people and other disadvantaged groups and the middle class of European descent, rather than these cynical, childish and disgusting censoring practices.
You also bring up a point about cultural practices. Not only there's no inherent master / slave dichotomy (a master is *not* someone who owns slaves, merely someone in a position of authority of some kind) but, in my corner of the woods very much the usual usage is as a mark of respect to someone who has achieved a certain status, either academical or in his chosen craft (be it operational or speculative), as well as the formal manner of addressing the captain of a ship.
The preoccupation with making sure your contributions show as a nice graphic in your linked in page.
I don't know how significant the effect is, but it's not uncommon to come across commits the only real purpose of which is clearly just to add someone's name to the kernel contributors list.
I have (or had) some lines of code in the kernel too, as well as 20+ years of various other regular contributions, mostly as a packager. It wouldn't occur to me to use those to pad my linked in page, if I had one. Much less to use donation money to do that, as I believe it just attracts low quality code.
The tool for offensive language scanning is called "BluBracket".
Blu from blue, presumably.
Bracket, from the Old French "braguette" meaning "Codpiece Armor".
So, loosely translated, their tool has blue balls. Awesome, that!
I got yer offensive language right 'ere... ain't English WONDERFUL?
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