Please Change 'Slave' terminology

[kimmers]

I am a manager at Cray Supercomputers, where we have recently started using Buildbot. Some of our employees have found the Master/Slave? terminology offensive. Please consider changing this terminology to Master/Worker?.

[dustin]

Patches for this are welcome, but need to preserve backward and forward compatibility, without unnecessary complication in the code.

[Marx]

The Master/Worker? definition offends me very much.

I propose as alternative PersonA/PersonBThatAgreesWithPersonAIdeasAndGladlyComplies, that should avoid anyone from being offended.

[dustin]

Please keep the kidding out of this bug. This is a serious request, and not the first time I've heard it.

My position is that the effort required to make this change, and the user confusion that would result, *far* outweigh any increase in Buildbot's inclusiveness. If someone is willing to put in that effort to produce a patch, and it has no disadvantages for users or developers (compatibility, code complexity, user confusion), then I'm open to merging it.

And to be clear to anyone embarking on that journey: that's a high bar, and it's not clear to me it's possible to meet it.

[Marx]

Don't you think comparing a good Worker to being owned by a Master worse than using the term Slave?

I find it very offending to our proletarian comrades.

[tom.prince]

@Marx: This discussion isn't productive or relevant. Please take it somewhere else.

[Marx]

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[kimmers]

Master/Worker? is just a suggestion and another less offensive term may also provide an adequate solution.

@Marx There have been past legal cases where the 'Master/Slave?' term has been banned in hard drive arrangements. No matter your individual position on this subject, I think we can all agree that it would be a shame if this were to prevent someone from using this software in the future.

@dustin Thank you for being sensitive and open to this request. Note that this request would cover changes to the documentation (which is excellent by the way) as well as the code base. I do understand your concern for this to not impact development and backwards compatibility.

[tom.prince]

One other concern, is existing third-party and mirrored documentation, that isn't under the projects control.

[flaviojs]

master/slave... master/worker... server/worker... server/bot... hmm, buildserver/buildbot is not that bad but buildbot is already used as the master interface.

Regardless of what is chosen, this would be a radical change so it should come with a change in the major version. (1.0)