On Wed, Jul 15, 2020 at 6:31 AM Trevor Woerner <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> As most are aware, there are efforts in many open-source/free-software
> communities to adjust the language that is used throughout a given project
> to be more inclusive.
>
> We discussed this briefly at the most recent YP Technical Team/Engineering
> Sync Meeting. Many good points were raised. I'd like to start a discussion on
> this topic via email in order to enumerate and keep track of these efforts.
>
> 1. As a project we need to decide whether or not to undertake this work. Not
> all projects have decided to make any changes. The discussions we had at the
> last meeting made it feel as though it was a forgone conclusion by those who
> spoke up that we would take on this work. Is that the consensus? Silence
> represents agreement?

A note here, as I was talking with Paul Barker about this last week.

We've already done this in part of YP, in the now retired autobuilder
code base (about 6 years ago), removing master/slave terminology. So
there is precedent. I think it should be done, as much as it can be
done. Certainly WHITELIST/BLACKLIST type terminology at minimum.

>
> 2. Scope Creep. From the dawn of the OE project, there have been "discussions"
> around variable/function names. In order to keep this work sane and concise, I
> must insist that the scope of this work is "inclusive language" not "PN is too
> cryptic for beginners, we should expand it to PACKAGENAME"

Agreed.

>
> 3. Deprecation Plan. Given the layered nature of the ecosystem, inevitably
> there will be not-so-frequently-used layers out there that could stop working
> entirely depending on how this work is implemented. Do we continue to support
> the "old" language indefinitely? Do we have a flag day where everything
> changes at once? Do we give warnings for X releases then have a cut off?

I think we need to do this responsibly, so yes, I'd be in favour of a
"here is our ideal, here is our deadline" and communicating that out
to all layer maintainers in layers.openembedded.org as well as the
mailing lists with a clearly defined set of goals and dates and doing
the things we can do to minimize build breakage between now and that
point.

-b

>
> 4. What will be affected? Branch names, variable names, function names,
> fetchers, patch file names, documentation… Given the fact we build code from
> upstream projects, if we currently build from an upstream's master branch and
> that upstream project never changes the name of their main branch away from
> "master", I don't think there's anything we can do in those cases.
>
> 5. Backports. How far back do we make changes?
>
> 6. Terminology. The Linux kernel project has put out some recommendations:
> https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=49decddd39e5f6132ccd7d9fdc3d7c470b0061bb
>
> To start the discussion, can we please get a consensus on item #1? If
> positive, can we then work on whether we agree with the list of items (have I
> forgotten anything, are there things to add to the list, or things to remove
> from the list)? THEN can we please focus on each of the items from the list we
> create?
>
> I think that would be a more sane approach rather than trying to do everything
> at once.
>
> Best regards,
>         Trevor
> 
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