There are no formal alternatives in place, but Torvalds suggested plenty of choices. Suggested replacements for master/slave are primary/secondary, controller/device, requester/responder, and main/replica. Alternatives for blacklist/whitelist are denylist/allowlist and blocklist/passlist. A long list might create a few confusing cases in the future as the Linux team or Torvalds haven’t recommended one set over another. However, creating a more inclusive language for the community’s use is the right way to go. [Read: Chipmaker Qualcomm invests $97 million in Jio Platforms] The Linux kernel community is not the only tech group to be changing its language. Last month, GitHub said that it will replace racially insensitive terms from its documentation.
— Leah Culver ? (@leahculver) June 6, 2020 In May, after George Floyd’s death in the US, a string of protests sprung up worldwide to support Black Lives Matter initiatives. In a way to show solidarity, the tech community proposed to get rid of terms such as blacklist and slave. Several major product and programming language teams including Twitter, Chrome, Android, Curl, Go, and Microsoft have also adopted alternative terminology.
