[llvm-dev] Inclusive language in LLVM: can we rename `master` branch?

[Renato Golin via llvm-dev]

On Sun, 21 Jun 2020 at 02:00, Lang Hames via llvm-dev
<llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> If the bar for removal / renaming is "Use of X is offensive", or "Use of X is clearly impacting contributors or potential contributors" then I'm all for it. If the bar is "Nobody has actually complained, but X could be mistaken for something offensive" that seems like a low bar.

I agree.

That was similar to my point about culture. For example, in China, the
number 4 is bad (because the word is similar to "death"), in the US,
buildings don't have the 13th floor, because it's unlucky. If a lot of
people didn't take that seriously, they wouldn't make *buildings" like
that.

To be culturally sensitive to all our developers, should we skip those
numbers from our releases, too? This would be perfectly sensible
cultural proactivity, but is that really going to improve anything?
Are people not contributing because the release version is 4.0?

One thing is changing the "master" branch to whatever else. This is a
pretty trivial one-time cost. Another is starting to rename everything
that someone could possibly think it's offensive, in which case we
would need a dictionary of terms to explain to people what we "really"
mean, and that would bar adoption, including from people the changes
are targeted to help.

Words have many meanings in one single language. But English is not
just one language. To begin with, it's spoken natively in many
countries and totally different words and sometimes grammar are used.
But there's also the "international" English, which the rest of the
world uses, especially in computer science. Lots of those words had no
other meaning to me before I moved into an English speaking country.

Some people are raising the issue that the added requests on top of
the branch name are extremely American centric. I have to completely
agree. Racism is a worldwide concept, but the specific form racism
takes in the US has specific terminology and specific "fixes" that do
not apply to the rest of the world. In some cases, the fix itself can
actually be offensive.

I've been to many places in the world, I spoke to engineers and
scientists on most of them, and there is a stark difference between
the US and the rest of the world. In the US, it's common for people to
think their solutions should apply to the rest of the world, while in
the rest of the world, it's more common for people to understand other
parts of the world would solve problems differently.

I have said this in every thread that touches cultural sensitivity in
this list for more than a decade: LLVM is not a US only project. There
are thousands of people that use it every day and whose voices are not
being heard.

I understand the reality of the US today, the anger and despair of a
very relevant historical event that lasted centuries and still hurts a
large part of the population. Slavery, genocide of the native
population is a huge part of Brazilian history too, and in the rest of
Latin America. You don't need to dig the news too much to find similar
problems in every continent.

But how we solve that problem is different depending on the culture.
We cannot solve the problem in a US centric way and think the problem
is solved. Doing so will create more problems to the rest of the
world, and it would alienate a huge section of this community, and
would counter the goals of inclusivity.

Can we please focus on the branch name change today, and look about
other changes later? There are technical details to hash out before we
can actually do that one.

In the interests of diversity and inclusivity, I'd also ask that any
change of names for the reason of diversity to be actually approved by
a diverse set of developers, not one or two of the same culture? I
would hate to see biased changes trickle in making LLVM harder to work
with by a large section of our community.

cheers,
--renato