Change terminology to ExcludeList

[brzuchal]

The change was inspired by https://go-review.googlesource.com/c/go/+/236857/ and replaces all occurrences of blacklist with exclude_list.

Most of the changes are internal only with two exceptions for which this patch requires RFC:

• opcache.blacklist_filename INI directive
• opcache_get_configuration()["blacklist"] key in returned array value

Above INI directive and value returned by opcache_get_configuration() will be marked as deprecated and superseded by (respectively):

• opcache.exclude_list_filename INI directive
• opcache_get_configuration()["exclude_list"] key in returned array value

Old INI directive and value returned by opcache_get_configuration() will remain the same for BC purposes till next minor version for removal.

[brzuchal]

Will prepare a migration path with INI handler and a duplicate of "blacklist" key value in opcache_get_configuration() returning array.

[rocky114]

Do you need to change the black font? Because the general white screen

[mpyw]

Actually I agree with the civil movement, but it doesn't deserve triggering BC breaks on programming languages. We must not forget the development principles.

Are you really going to kill black and white words everywhere?

[marcioAlmada]

There is a BC break involved and an RFC is required.

[brzuchal]

RFC is on the way. After deeper search realised that I can provide better naming which will continue working on in places where alternatives bring additional benefit.

[kallesommernielsen]

I can’t really see the BC justification here, it strikes me like a change for the sake of change, but either way it does require an RFC.

I do not think that the PHP project should go down this path of changing words that is neutral themselves to something else because someone might get offended because it’s a color, are we also going to change the zend_gc.c internal names to fit this philosophy?

[javiereguiluz]

@brzuchal the new recommended terminology (which has been adopted by lots of other Open Source projects) is "allowlist + denylist" instead of "allowlist + blocklist" (see https://www.google.com/search?q=allowlist+denylist)

[remicollet]

Notice: in downstream we use a default value:
opcache.blacklist_filename=/etc/php.d/opcache*.blacklist

So using "block" will be easier to managed, without breaking everything.
opcache.blocklist_filename=/etc/php.d/opcache*.bl?cklist

[szepczynski]

delete whitespaces! Whitespace should be deleted!

[linaori]

Sad to see so many troll responses.

For those that have not read the original link:

There's been plenty of discussion on the usage of these terms in tech.
I'm not trying to have yet another debate. It's clear that there are
people who are hurt by them and who are made to feel unwelcome by their
use due not to technical reasons but to their historical and social
context. That's simply enough reason to replace them.

Anyway, allowlist and blocklist are more self-explanatory than whitelist
and blacklist, so this change has negative cost.

[bt0r]

As Mpyw said before, i agree with the actual movement too but removing these words will have a significant impact (BC break).
What's funny is to think that we'd like to change terminology just because it contains "black" or "white" in it without having racist connotations. In the end, we "create" this "racist" connotation by trying to remove it.

[brzuchal]

These alternative forms have significant clarity advantages in implementation because they (without “lists”) are verbs: Allow lists allow things, deny lists deny things. Blacklists do not black things. If you argue that the verb is “blacklist,” you have illustrated the problem. source

[dkarlovi]

I support the change, but please do it following BC policy, with a RFC etc.

[brzuchal]

@remicollet thanks for the comment, I agree that "blocklist" would be easier to manage and also added more self-descriptive.

[mpyw]

@blacklistisnotracist Definitely I agree with you. I propose people should call Black and White as African-American and English-American. We should stop myopic thinking; it's just word-hunting.

[Jurigag]

Honestly i don't like this change. Any change should be made because of making developer life easier, it should be any logical consequence of improving technology, not because someone feels it racist or other companies, people are doing like this, so why not PHP?

Framework, language etc should stay out of politics, racists etc topics, this is a no place for talking about stuff like this, because it just matter of opinion, whatever you would like to change this whitelist/blacklist you can always find one people where this new word will be disrespectful/racist for them, will you then change it again to some other word, until other opinion will occur? Or you don't care about other opinions, and only about black opinion?

Also 5-10 years ago you would never think about of this change, or even connect word like whitelist/blacklist to color of skins or racism, because no one was ever thinking about it like this, only media changed your way of thinking, are we really gonna implement changes now because of what media suggests and not what developers need, expect?

[LunaMeadows]

Honestly i don't like this change. Any change should be made because of making developer life easier, it should be any logical consequence of improving technology, not because someone feels it racist or other companies, people are doing like this, so why not PHP?

Framework, language etc should stay out of politics, racists etc topics, this is a no place for talking about stuff like this, because it just matter of opinion, whatever you would like to change this whitelist/blacklist you can always find one people where this new word will be disrespectful/racist for them, will you then change it again to some other word, until other opinion will occur? Or you don't care about other opinions, and only about black opinion?

Also 5-10 years ago you would never think about of this change, or even connect word like whitelist/blacklist to color of skins or racism, because no one was ever thinking about it like this, only media changed your way of thinking, are we really gonna implement changes now because of what media suggests and not what developers need, expect?

How does this change not make a developers life easier? If they are new to PHP then the terms are more straight forward, if they are already experienced then all it is is a simple change of 2 words not a complete overhaul of how everything interacts. Nothing is made harder.

Racism isn't a "matter of opinion", it is a systematic way of oppression and no field should "stay out of politics". Since you think a small group of people might get offended by allowlist/blocklist we shouldn't use terms that were either made to be racist or can very easily be made to appear racist.

Yes, 5-10 years ago people were talking about this. People have been talking about this for a very long time, just because it wasn't in your bubble doesn't mean it wasn't. https://twitter.com/jessitron/status/569914966943248385 was just from a quick google search.

[Jurigag]

Honestly i don't like this change. Any change should be made because of making developer life easier, it should be any logical consequence of improving technology, not because someone feels it racist or other companies, people are doing like this, so why not PHP?
Framework, language etc should stay out of politics, racists etc topics, this is a no place for talking about stuff like this, because it just matter of opinion, whatever you would like to change this whitelist/blacklist you can always find one people where this new word will be disrespectful/racist for them, will you then change it again to some other word, until other opinion will occur? Or you don't care about other opinions, and only about black opinion?
Also 5-10 years ago you would never think about of this change, or even connect word like whitelist/blacklist to color of skins or racism, because no one was ever thinking about it like this, only media changed your way of thinking, are we really gonna implement changes now because of what media suggests and not what developers need, expect?

How does this change not make a developers life easier? If they are new to PHP then the terms are more straight forward, if they are already experienced then all it is is a simple change of 2 words not a complete overhaul of how everything interacts. Nothing is made harder.

Racism isn't a "matter of opinion", it is a systematic way of oppression and no field should "stay out of politics". Since you think a small group of people might get offended by allowlist/blocklist we shouldn't use terms that were either made to be racist or can very easily be made to appear racist.

Yes, 5-10 years ago people were talking about this. People have been talking about this for a very long time, just because it wasn't in your bubble doesn't mean it wasn't. https://twitter.com/jessitron/status/569914966943248385 was just from a quick google search.

Yea, and you can exactly read it that origin of blacklist was never racial in one of comments on this twitter. By making this change we are agreeing that anything having word black is racist basically.

Yes, racism is a matter of opinion and this topic proves it, for someone word blacklist is racist and for other not.

It doesn't make a developer life easier because they already used blacklist/whitelist fot years, as well this change is a breaking change.

The systematic oppression which are you talking about is happening in all communities and groups, no matter the color of skin.

[LunaMeadows]

Honestly i don't like this change. Any change should be made because of making developer life easier, it should be any logical consequence of improving technology, not because someone feels it racist or other companies, people are doing like this, so why not PHP?
Framework, language etc should stay out of politics, racists etc topics, this is a no place for talking about stuff like this, because it just matter of opinion, whatever you would like to change this whitelist/blacklist you can always find one people where this new word will be disrespectful/racist for them, will you then change it again to some other word, until other opinion will occur? Or you don't care about other opinions, and only about black opinion?
Also 5-10 years ago you would never think about of this change, or even connect word like whitelist/blacklist to color of skins or racism, because no one was ever thinking about it like this, only media changed your way of thinking, are we really gonna implement changes now because of what media suggests and not what developers need, expect?

How does this change not make a developers life easier? If they are new to PHP then the terms are more straight forward, if they are already experienced then all it is is a simple change of 2 words not a complete overhaul of how everything interacts. Nothing is made harder.
Racism isn't a "matter of opinion", it is a systematic way of oppression and no field should "stay out of politics". Since you think a small group of people might get offended by allowlist/blocklist we shouldn't use terms that were either made to be racist or can very easily be made to appear racist.
Yes, 5-10 years ago people were talking about this. People have been talking about this for a very long time, just because it wasn't in your bubble doesn't mean it wasn't. https://twitter.com/jessitron/status/569914966943248385 was just from a quick google search.

Yea, and you can exactly read it that origin of blacklist was never racial in one of comments on this twitter. By making this change we are agreeing that anything having word black is racist basically.

Yes, racism is a matter of opinion and this topic proves it, for someone word blacklist is racist and for other not.

It doesn't make a developer life easier because they already used blacklist/whitelist fot years, as well this change is a breaking change.

One person says the origin wasn't racist yet an entire research paper says it is. I think I know what I am going to believe. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6148600/

No, racism isn't a matter of opinion, pineapple on pizza is an opinion.

Thousands of changes are breaking changes until they aren't, that isn't an excuse for not doing it.

Systematic oppression requires both the power to do something and the protections from consequences of those actions. White people have both, Black people and POC don't. They can't cause systematic oppression.

[lsmith77]

Our community clearly is not diverse. Even if you don't think these words are offensive, this is an effective way community a willingness to change and welcome a more diverse user base. And as stated above as an added bonus these alternative terms are much clearer.

In fact if you disagree with the need to remove offensive words, you should agree that clearer terminology is better and I have yet to hear a valid argument saying that whitelist is clearer than allowlist.

[Jurigag]

There is systematic oppression as well against white people, not sure why you are thinking about only black people in those terms, while white people are systemically oppressed in Africa for example.

Not sure why we go from programming discussion into politics and racist discussion, still i don't see single reason from programming perspective to change those naming, does this improve anything for developer? Partially. Does it improve anything in language itself? No. Does it break something? Yes, and you should avoid such changes as much as possible, especially if they don't anything new and don't improve anything in significant way.

I agree that it is indeed a clearer terminology, which should be implemented years ago, but i don't agree that it's racist because one person wrote a document about it, or some people are trying to add such implications to it, simple as that.

We shouldn't make a changes only because some group of people is adding some weird racist thing to it, because one paper wrote about it.

If we will be keep doing things like this, soon everyone will be afraid of using white/black words anywhere.

[LunaMeadows]

If we will be keep doing things like this, soon everyone will be afraid of using white/black words anywhere.

Good? 99% of the words are based in racism. If you are given receipts of when words were made and you deny the facts, you really should take a step back and understand why you don't want to believe facts.

It's funny to see those who claim blacklist/whitelist to be offensive are all whites

Perspective Bias is a real thing.

[Jurigag]

If we will be keep doing things like this, soon everyone will be afraid of using white/black words anywhere.

Good? 99% of the words are based in racism.

It's funny to see those who claim blacklist/whitelist to be offensive are all whites

Perspective Bias is a real thing.

Any source of this 99% of the words are based in racism? This is just your opinion which I and many people will disagree with. We are making those words like this because of exact ideas/discussions like this, not because in deed it has any racist implications.

[LunaMeadows]

Whoa, we should stop using English!!! It's a language spoken by a group of people who dare to enslave others!

Sorry that caring for others and what is offensive is hard to do and that if you can't use one word you should be able to use the language is a bad hill to fall on.

Any source of this 99% of the words are based in racism?

How about you do some research of your own instead of having to be spoon fed and since you can't understand context 99% of words that contain black are racist, not 99% of the English vocab.

[Jurigag]

Whoa, we should stop using English!!! It's a language spoken by a group of people who dare to enslave others!

Sorry that caring for others and what is offensive is hard to do and that if you can't use one word you should be able to use the language is a bad hill to fall on.

Any source of this 99% of the words are based in racism?

How about you do some research of your own instead of having to be spoon fed and since you can't understand context 99% of words that contain black are racist, not 99% of the English vocab.

Word black is actually an adjective. You can join it with any noun. And yet you suggest that 99% of such connection are racist, because they just have black in it. So my black boots are racist? Or my black chair as well? I'm sad for them.

[nikic]

An RFC has now been posted at https://externals.io/message/110582. If you would like to discuss the general change, please do so there. Comments on this pull request should be concerned with specific technical implementation issues only.

[crossjoin]

Just saw that there are new opache settings in PHP 8 of this type which should be adjusted too:

• opcache.jit_blacklist_root_trace
• opcache.jit_blacklist_side_trace

[iluuu1994]

It looks like no consensus has been reached here and the branch is also outdated and stale. I'm closing this for now. I suspect an RFC might be the only way to really resolve this.