Re: Diversity and offensive terminology in RFCs

[Evan Hunt <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, Sep 20, 2018 at 12:51:18PM +0100, Dave Cridland wrote:
> Back when I was even more clueless than I am today, and actually ran DNS
> servers, we used the terms "primary" and "secondary" as a matter of course.
> Secondaries copied the data from primaries.
> 
> So far, so good.
> 
> Then we added a third nameserver, and of course that must be the tertiary,
> used only when *both* the primary and secondary had failed.

This suggests that at the time, you may have been under the impression
that the secondary server would be used only when the primary had failed?

For whatever it's worth, I think of it as concentric rings, with "primary"
referring to the center ring and "secondary" to the next ring out. Data
originates in the primary ring, and migrates to and through the secondary
ring, and we name the servers "primary" or "secondary" depending on which
ring they're in.

I never thought of "master" as having political or racial implications
(though, of course, as a white American guy, I do excel at overlooking
such things).  I thought of it as comparable to "master key".  But at some
point it crossed my mind that nobody ever talks about "slave keys", and if
the original choice of terminology had been so innocuous, then why don't
call them "master" and "copy"?  And then I started to see how these terms
could indeed come across as unwelcoming to people of some backgrounds.

And since "primary/secondary" works fine, I now try to use it, at least in
professional writing.  In casual conversation, old habits take longer to
break.

-- 
Evan Hunt -- [e-mail]
Internet Systems Consortium, Inc.