Kafka and problematic language

[Rich Bowen <rb...@apache.org>]

Hi, Kafka friends,

As you may have heard, Red Hat recently embarked on a company-wide effort to remove problematic/unwelcoming language from code, documentation, and web presences, both upstream and downstream, related to projects that we care about, and which form critical parts of our technology stack. Camel is, of course, one of those projects.

We are joined in this effort by colleagues at a large and growing number of technology companies and organizations.

Our CTO Chris Wright blogged about this - https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/making-open-source-more-inclusive-eradicating-problematic-language - back in June and we have been making steady - if slow - progress since then.

I'm in the process of reaching out to various projects to see what we can do to get this work done.

I was wondering if Kafka is looking at this issue at all.

A lazy github search shows, of the words that we've been focusing on:

Slave
https://github.com/apache/kafka/search?q=slave
0

Master
https://github.com/apache/kafka/search?q=master
18

Whitelist
https://github.com/apache/kafka/search?q=whitelist
11

Blacklist
https://github.com/apache/kafka/search?q=blacklist
10

So, naively, it looks like there's not a big task here, but I'm not an expert on how such changes would effect external dependencies/users.

We've drafted a document about how one might approach this topic - https://github.com/conscious-lang/conscious-lang-docs/blob/main/recommendations.md and a faq at https://github.com/conscious-lang/conscious-lang-docs/blob/main/faq.md if you'd like to read more about the "what", "why", and "how" of this project, and I'd be glad to discuss this more with any of you. 

Re: Kafka and problematic language

[Rich Bowen <rb...@apache.org>]

On 2020/11/05 16:58:11, Tom Bentley <tb...@redhat.com> wrote: 
> Hi Rich,
> 
> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/KAFKA/KIP-629%3A+Use+racially+neutral+terms+in+our+codebase
> is already addressing blacklist and whitelist. However, it does look like
> the term "master key" is being used and isn't being addressed under
> KIP-629. I'm sure we can open a KIP to similarly address that.
> 
> Many of the other uses of the term master in that search are in branch
> names in external github URLs, or keywords in SSH config files, where we're
> not in a position to make a replacement.


Thanks so much for your response. This is great.

Re: Kafka and problematic language

[Tom Bentley <tb...@redhat.com>]

Hi Rich,

https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/KAFKA/KIP-629%3A+Use+racially+neutral+terms+in+our+codebase
is already addressing blacklist and whitelist. However, it does look like
the term "master key" is being used and isn't being addressed under
KIP-629. I'm sure we can open a KIP to similarly address that.

Many of the other uses of the term master in that search are in branch
names in external github URLs, or keywords in SSH config files, where we're
not in a position to make a replacement.

Kind regards,

Tom

On Thu, Nov 5, 2020 at 4:40 PM Rich Bowen <rb...@apache.org> wrote:

> Hi, Kafka friends,
>
> As you may have heard, Red Hat recently embarked on a company-wide effort
> to remove problematic/unwelcoming language from code, documentation, and
> web presences, both upstream and downstream, related to projects that we
> care about, and which form critical parts of our technology stack. Camel
> is, of course, one of those projects.
>
> We are joined in this effort by colleagues at a large and growing number
> of technology companies and organizations.
>
> Our CTO Chris Wright blogged about this -
> https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/making-open-source-more-inclusive-eradicating-problematic-language
> - back in June and we have been making steady - if slow - progress since
> then.
>
> I'm in the process of reaching out to various projects to see what we can
> do to get this work done.
>
> I was wondering if Kafka is looking at this issue at all.
>
> A lazy github search shows, of the words that we've been focusing on:
>
> Slave
> https://github.com/apache/kafka/search?q=slave
> 0
>
> Master
> https://github.com/apache/kafka/search?q=master
> 18
>
> Whitelist
> https://github.com/apache/kafka/search?q=whitelist
> 11
>
> Blacklist
> https://github.com/apache/kafka/search?q=blacklist
> 10
>
> So, naively, it looks like there's not a big task here, but I'm not an
> expert on how such changes would effect external dependencies/users.
>
> We've drafted a document about how one might approach this topic -
> https://github.com/conscious-lang/conscious-lang-docs/blob/main/recommendations.md
> and a faq at
> https://github.com/conscious-lang/conscious-lang-docs/blob/main/faq.md if
> you'd like to read more about the "what", "why", and "how" of this project,
> and I'd be glad to discuss this more with any of you.
>
>