Remove blacklist terminology · Issue #6475 · osquery/osquery | Hacker News Reader

Remove blacklist terminology · Issue #6475 · osquery/osquery

github.com

13 pointsedward23 comments

I think the most remarkable thing about that issue is that

* It got created and it got resolved

* There was no whining. It just got done.

There was an understanding that there was a code of conduct for the project, and that this change met the spirit of upholding that code of conduct, and it just got done.

If only everything in life was this simple.

EDIT: What's a shame, however, is that this is a shining example of good conduct, and somehow it's disappeared from the front page in the time it took me to read it and write this comment.

From wikipedia:

The English dramatist Philip Massinger used the phrase "black list" in his 1639 tragedy The Unnatural Combat.[3]

After the Restoration of the English monarchy brought Charles II of England to the throne in 1660, a list of regicides named those to be punished for the execution of his father.[4] The state papers of Charles II say "If any innocent soul be found in this black list, let him not be offended at me, but consider whether some mistaken principle or interest may not have misled him to vote".[5] In a 1676 history of the events leading up to the Restoration, James Heath (a supporter of Charles II) alleged that Parliament had passed an Act requiring the sale of estates, "And into this black list the Earl of Derby was now put, and other unfortunate Royalists".[6]

Edward Gibbon wrote in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776) of Andronicus that "His memory was stored with a black list of the enemies and rivals, who had traduced his merit, opposed his greatness, or insulted his misfortunes".[7]

Allowlist/denylist is clearer and more intuitive. This same pattern (bias free communication resulting in clear communication and less injustice) can be seen in other areas. I wrote this yesterday after Microsoft added a bias free communication document, but it's as applicable here. [1]

At least in the UK, its laws and people would be better served if bias-free communication is rigorously used when lawmaking. The Land Registration Act 2002 an example of statute law which unnecessarily and frequently uses gendered words. [2] Sure, this is written in 2002, times have changed, but this is considered a key statute governing UK land law. Even as recently as 2015, unnecessarily gendered language is used in the Consumer Rights Act 2015, albeit not as consistently, but I'm sure more recent statutes also share this trait. [3] This sloppiness in writing could cause needless issues.

Here's one. The UK's Foreign Office noted that the phrase 'pregnant women' in general comment No. 36 on article 6 of the UN's International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on the right to life 'may be inadvertently restricting the application of this paragraph to exclude transgender people who have given birth; this has happened in two recent cases in the UK.' [4]

This issue is greater than everyday language in business, but the same type of language used in our laws can potentially cost businesses by poorly-worded contracts or by other means. Legislatures should use gender-neutral language to make their laws clear and reduce potential needless unjustice.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23439283 / https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/style-guide/bias-free-commu...

[2] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2002/9/section/24

[3] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/pdfs/ukpga_2015...

[4] https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/CCPR/GCArticle6/Uni...

>Legislatures should use gender-neutral language to make their laws clear and reduce potential needless unjustice

In my mother tongue there are no gender-specific pronouns, there is just no grammatical gender. It doesn't exist so this whole thing so foregin to me.

I think this is a great move for a number of reasons, but as one commenter said, I think Allow/Deny are just simpler terms in general.

White/Black are abstractions and adds one more hurdle for folks new to the industry - especially those from different languages and cultures where white != good and black != bad.

I think this is good for social reasons, but I hope the industry in general moves away from black/white because its just not the best way to convey these ideas, its just the one that stuck.

I was genuinely curious about the origin of this word based on these various projects changing it.

And according to the Wikipedia (and the Oxford English Dictionary) [1], it seems like blacklist came about something like 400 years ago in England. It doesn't seem to be related to race.

Is there a movement that is tying those terms to race? Would love to see some links about it. Because master/slave seems like a much more obvious set of terms that we can and should get rid of (and replace with leader/follower, primary/secondary, etc).

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklisting

Irrespective of origin, the terms seem to equate black to bad and white to good, and as such should probably be retired. As other comments have mentioned, allow and deny are more explicit and thus probably better terms anyway.

I agree with you – allow/deny is easier to understand anyway for global non-native speaker (which all open source projects are).

There are many practical reasons to do this, I just wasn't clear on the race-related reasoning for blacklist/whitelist, as these words don't have those etymologies.

The color black is associated with many non-racial things that we do deem negative, things like death with black clothes at funerals, things like the darkness being the absence of light (sunlight is brighter/whiter), being blinded, where we do mostly see black. None of those things are racial, what should we do about all those?

Perhaps a better change is to stop associating our skin color with those words which are clearly inaccurate, and serve absolutely no useful purpose.

I agree that'd be great, but between changing the world's use of black and white and changing our use of blacklist and whitelist as pertains to software, one is in our power and the other isn't. Who knows, maybe someone will even feel more welcomed in our profession as a result.

Why would one feel unwelcome? We just established the word has nothing to do with race.

What if we're whitelisting or blacklisting people for the privilege to attend an organized crime conference? Which is good? Which is bad?

Note that in this unsavory example there is zero ambiguity! The whitelisted will hang with other mobsters, clearly, plotting evil and mayhem all the while.

The terms have bupkis to do with good and bad.

Okay, I guess if you're writing malware then you can feel free to carry on with whatever terminology you like. For the rest of us it is understood that a blacklist is untrusted and a whitelist is trusted, so why don't we just say that explicitly and do away with a culturally dependent metaphor that could offend or confuse?

"Trust" is overloaded in a CS context thus adding to, not reducing, cognitive load.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_system

Where does this whitewashing (err, denywashing) stop?

No a blacklist and whitelist has nothing to do with trust.

Blacklist simply means “allow by default except for things in this list” whereas whitelist means “deny everything except for what’s in this list”

A recommended read/watch where white is definitely bad: "a dry white season" by André Brink. Oscar for Marlon Brando in the movie version.

Hmm, wonder what they'd think about some other tech terminology then?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master/slave_(technology)

Or talks of this in typesetting?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widows_and_orphans

But seriously, this is silly. Words and phrases can have multiple meanings, and they can be used for perfectly innocuous reasons in various fields.

I wouldnt agree there. Words are powerful and just becuase they have multiple meanings does not mean that those meanings are not intertwined.

Regardless, those terms don't translate well and only make sense to people from other languages and cultures if you translate it and add the history to it.

Primary and Replica accomplishes the same goal but don't get weighed down with "what is a slave" or "why is the master in control of the slave".

Yeah, its a little inconvenient, but making software more inclusive is a pretty worthy goal and it wont take long to update the majority of tools and texts.

Staying comfortable because its convenient, while it makes other people uncomfortable, is probably why software is still largely a white male industry.

I built a federated datastore recently, and was very careful to always say "primary/replica" instead of "master/slave".

Exactly, this is just going to open up a pandora's box. What about black box testing, is that racist too? And english terms like blacksmith and black-belt?

There are terms like "blue-collar vs white-collar" too which (according to some) deems the physical labor class as inferior to the "white" intellectual class. And there are general english phrases too like "things aren't always black and white, there is a lot of grey area in between".

Those terms don't explicitly attach a moral value to colors in the way that the blacklist/whitelist terminology does.

Blacklist/whitelist do not attach moral values to color either. Do you have a peer reviewed study that states these words attach moral values?

Being blacklisted can be a morally good thing. An example: You can be blacklisted from a gang's kill list because you did good deeds for the neighborhood.

The only people attaching moral values to these are people trying to gaslight others into believing "black=bad".

Then how about "black hat hacker"?

Wonder what the reaction would be if people requested that "brownout" no longer be used because it's insensitive to certain races.

Perfectly sensible, issues like this are automatically detected and enforced in shipping codebases where I work. As a commenter on the issue says the result is frankly clearer and more understandable anyway.

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