Why Linux Is Dropping ‘master/slave’ and ‘blacklist/whitelist’ Terms

Premise Overview

Amid growing global opposition to racial discrimination, exemplified by the Black Lives Matter movement, many IT companies and software projects are eliminating terms such as master, slave, blacklist, and whitelist to avoid perceived racial bias.

Linux Will Replace Sensitive Terms

Linus Torvalds recently approved a proposal in the Linux kernel's Git repository. From now on, Linux developers should avoid using master/slave, blacklist/whitelist, and similar sensitive terminology.

The suggested replacements for master/slave include:

{primary,main} / {secondary,replica,subordinate}

{initiator,requester} / {target,responder}

{controller,host} / {device,worker,proxy}

leader / follower

director / performer

Proposed alternatives for blacklist/whitelist are:

denylist / allowlist

blocklist / passlist

The Linux team does not endorse any specific term, leaving the choice to developers. New terminology will be used in future source code and documentation, while legacy terms may remain for maintaining older code, though an official statement has yet to be released.

Commentary

Many tech giants and open‑source projects—including Twitter, GitHub, Microsoft, LinkedIn, MySQL, Android, Golang, Curl, and now Linux—have reviewed their language to avoid racial connotations. The movement aims to replace words that evoke negative historical contexts with neutral, inclusive alternatives.

While changing terminology can introduce compatibility and workflow challenges, the sensitivity of the issue in Western contexts makes open opposition difficult. The impact on Chinese developers is limited; major domestic projects like Skywalking, Echart, TiDB, TiKV, Kylin, and Deepin may also adjust their terminology, but ordinary developers need not worry excessively.