Linux 5.8 Formally Adds The Inclusive Terminology Guidelines

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Merged overnight into the Linux kernel source tree are the new guidelines concerning the use of “inclusive terminology” for future code.

It was just one week ago that the inclusive terminology guidelines for the Linux kernelwere first proposed to mixed reaction and have now been merged into the source tree after receiving enough approval of various upstream kernel maintainers.

At this stage these guidelines, which are part of the Linux kernel’s coding style, are about avoiding new usage of the words “master” and “slave” within the kernel code as well as avoiding “blacklist” and “whitelist”. This is intended for new code moving forward or modifying existing code but as long as it does not break the kernel ABI…