Linux will replace terms like "master/slave" or "whitelist/blacklist"

Political correctness continues to reap foolish victories in the world of technology and after extending and imposing its particular worldview on a multitude of projects and organizations, it is time for Linux, the jewel in the crown of open-source software.

It has been the same Linus Torvalds -after the timely debate and its acceptance without notable opposition to the change- who has given the green light to the replacement of according to what terms long used, by others that do not offend certain groups or, more precisely, to certain people within these groups and even outside them.

The surprise is nil and just like they have done many projects, the prohibited words that will go down in history in Linux development include terms such as "master/slave" or "whitelist/blacklist", which they will be replaced by other chords with the corresponding meaning. And there are more explicit if possible.

In this way, for the «master/slave» couple, it is considered to adopt «primary/secondary», «main/replica», «main/subordinate», «leader/follower» and some others, while for «whitelist/blacklist» it is spoken of "denylist/allowlist" or "blocklist/passlist". Which will be finally chosen we will surely know with the release of Linux 5.8, which does not have much left in the oven.

The supposed inclusive language is thus imposed in the Linux project and the proposal, although it had little dissent, came to generate occurrences of all kinds. For example, there was talk of replacing the references of "black/white" with "green/red", in the style of traffic lights, but they did not seem to work well in their written form and were ignored.

Now, will all these changes -all in general- serve to reduce the injustices that exist between human beings whose great difference at first glance is the tone of their skin, when terms such as light and darkness have been used by humanity from the beginning of the times?

According to the developer who has carried out this initiative, the reason is more spurious: "The revelation of 2020 was that black voices have been heard on a global scale and the Linux kernel project has made its small contribution to answering that call as He wants black voices, among all voices, in his developer community."

This being the case, it will be necessary to get used to this 'new normal' that, incidentally, does not seem particularly complicated to assume either.