Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [PATCH] CodingStyle: Inclusive Terminology

Greg Kroah-Hartman
2020-07-06T07:22:24Z

On Mon, Jul 06, 2020 at 05:10:37PM +1000, NeilBrown wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 04 2020, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
>
> > Another suggestion for "slave" replacement should be "device". This is in
> > the context of the w1 bus which is by far the largest user of the
> > master/slave terminology in the kernel.
>
> Ugh. Please, no. "device" doesn't mean anything, in that you can use
> it to refer to any thing. (i.e. it is almost semantically equivalent to
> "thing").

Context is everything, you can have a "controller" and a "device" that
the controller controls. These are common terms in many specs today,
look at the USB spec for an example of these terms being used in this
way for many decades.

So while the term might be generic, like the word it is replacing, it
makes sense when used in the context it will show up in, so it is a good
replacement in many instances.

thanks,

greg k-h