RE: Replacing "master" and "slave" terminology

["Greg Holmes" <greg -dot- holmes -at- gmail -dot- com>]

It's more than possible that I missed somebody already saying this --
if so, then I apologize for being redundant.

The "master" and "slave" relationship is morally objectionable
*amongst human beings*. It is *not* morally objectionable amongst
mechanical objects, electrical devices, or programming abstractions.
So to take offense in this case is a sort of category mistake.

Nor are the *words* offensive in themselves.  If you were writing a
paper about human slavery, "master" and "slave" are the very words
that you would use. They are simply descriptive. There certainly *do*
exist semi-related words that are inherently offensive, but these
aren't them.

And when describing engineering components, what these words describe
is not only unobjectionable, but desirable.


-Greg Holmes
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