Hector Martin

So here's a question, particularly for POCs. Is "master" a problematic word when not juxtaposed with "slave"? My guess is not, because the word has a much broader meaning in English, but I'd like to hear your thoughts.

I asked my wife - a POC, and she thinks the whole topic is ridiculous. What on earth makes you think that policing the word master and slave is in any way helpful?

This is the same logic the Washington NFL team uses to justify their team name being a racial slur. Many people of color in tech object to master being used as the top of a hierarchical structure. The reaction to the idea of changing this puts off others from joining tech.

You also have to remember that many of these terms came about during the era of computing when black women would operate in hot buildings performing calculations by hand. Maybe the choice in terminology is based in implicit bias.

An SPI slave operates at the command of the master device. It's a pretty appropriate usage of the word - which is why people (of all races) have used the term for decades

No it doesn't. SPI is just a communications protocol. The *only* meaning of master/slave in its context is that the master drives the clock and selects who to talk to. It does not say anything about who is following orders.

For example, it's entirely reasonable for a *master" SPI device to be polling commands to run from a "slave" SPI device. Sorry, the terminology is bad here, as it is in most overloaded usages of "master"/"slave".

For SPI, something like *host/device" would be easier to understand than "master/slave" (where the host implies more responsibility; in this case, driving the clock and chip selects). For I²C, since multiple devs can drive the bus, "initiator/target" or "/responder" works well.