Primary/Secondary

[Michael De Roover]

On Sunday, February 9, 2025 7:16:16 AM CET Ondřej Surý wrote:
> I absolute agree that the context matters. But there are more contexts - the
> historical context and the current discourse context. You can’t ignore
> either.
> 
> From historical context, we can probably deduce that the word “groper” had
> the connotations when dig was acronym “domain internet groper”. However in
> the current discourse, using word “groper” is just *ew*, and it is possible
> to take an action and just stop using that term, because exactly — the
> context matters.

Hey, I appreciate the call-back! Not to mention the light-hearted self-awareness of the 
acronym "dig" uses. I actually chuckled at that, thank you! :)

I wholeheartedly agree, the connotation of "groper" is nowadays very much associated 
with sexual assault. It reminds me of when our class got introduced to dig alongside 
nslookup, in a CCNA prep course. I had already heard of dig at the time, but found it 
amusing that our teacher included the full name of dig in her slides. There is most 
certainly something to be said about who uses the software we make, and how their 
interpretations to the naming conventions may be different from our own.

And I don't think she was mistaken to include it as such in her slides. To just put it out 
there, without really going into much detail on why she did so. That's something that 
could be inferred by reading between the lines, which women tend to be quite proficient 
in and my partner taught me over time.

Regarding the reply to Bjørn, yes, I do believe that we should change our terminology 
along with social norms and values. That is why language itself changes too. When looking 
at medieval texts in my native language (Dutch), I can read it.. but it's not like the words 
are still the same. Not by a long shot. Perhaps RFC 8499 made such a leap by introducing 
primary/secondary too. And the reference to master/slave was kept, for future reference. 
That's good design.

That being said, these are significant changes to make that will have historic ramifications 
themselves. As such, we should give them the care and sensitivity they deserve. With the 
social media frenzy now having come to an end (resulting in a tragic climax that raised a 
confederate flag in a federal government building, alongside burnt libraries), perhaps we 
are now in an ideal position to come back to this issue with the benefit of hindsight. I for 
one look forward to seeing what people from various parts of the world have to say about 
it.

-- 
Met vriendelijke groet,
Michael De Roover

Mail: isc at nixmagic.com
Web: michael.de.roover.eu.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.isc.org/pipermail/bind-users/attachments/20250209/22ba2230/attachment-0001.htm>