“For diversity reasons, it would be nice to try to avoid ‘master’ and ‘slave’ terminology, which can be associated with slavery,” Victor Stinner, a developer with the open source software company Red Hat, wrote. Stinner cited multiple private complaints in the thread as the reason for requesting the change.
Unsurprisingly, the change request resulted in a heated debate among Python developers about the necessity for the change. Many developers agreeing that the word “slave” ought to be removed, but that “master” wasn’t an offensive term. Others argued that the terminology accurately describes the relationship between electronic components and should be taken in context. One developer even invoked BDSM culture, saying “‘master/slave’ can have *positive* connotations. You want to support diversity, then why are you discriminating against that subculture?”