# Respectful Code

Inclusivity is central to Fuchsia's culture, and our values include treating
each other with dignity. As such, it’s important that everyone can contribute
without facing the harmful effects of bias and discrimination.  However, terms
in our codebase, UIs, and documentation can perpetuate that discrimination.
This document sets forth guidance that aims to address disrespectful
terminology in code and documentation.

## Policy

Terminology that is derogatory, hurtful, or perpetuates discrimination, either
directly or indirectly, should be avoided.

## What is in scope for this policy?

Anything that a contributor would read while working on Fuchsia, including:

- Names of variables, types, functions, files, build rules, binaries, exported
  variables, ...
- Test data
- System output and displays
- Documentation (both inside and outside of source files)
- Commit messages

## Principles

- Be respectful: Derogatory language shouldn’t be necessary to describe how
  things work.
- Respect culturally sensitive language:  Some words may carry significant
  historical or political meanings.  Please be mindful of this and use
  alternatives.

## How do I know if particular terminology is OK or not?

Apply the principles above.  If you have any questions, you can reach out to
fuchsia-community-managers@google.com.

## What are examples of terminology to be avoided?

These lists are NOT meant to be comprehensive. They contain a few examples that
people have run into frequently.

**Specific terms**

| Term      | Suggested alternatives                                        |
| --------- | ------------------------------------------------------------- |
| master    | primary, controller, leader, host                             |
| slave     | replica, subordinate, secondary, follower, device, peripheral |
| whitelist | allowlist, exception list, inclusion list                     |
| blacklist | denylist, blocklist, exclusion list                           |
| insane    | unexpected, catastrophic, incoherent                          |
| sane      | expected, appropriate, sensible, valid                        |
| crazy     | unexpected, catastrophic, incoherent                          |
| redline   | priority line, limit, soft limit                              |

**Idioms**

Prefer descriptive and factual statements instead of idioms. Idioms can suffer
from the same problems described above, and also they can be difficult to
understand for people with a different cultural context than you.

* For example, instead of "this is not black or white", prefer "this is more
  nuanced".
* Instead of "this is the blind leading the blind", explain what you mean, like
  "the reference you point to is inaccurate because ...".

## What if I am interfacing with something that violates this policy?

This circumstance has come up a few times, particularly for code implementing
specifications.  In these circumstances, differing from the language in the
specification may interfere with the ability to understand the implementation.
For these circumstances, we suggest one of the following, in order of decreasing
preference:

1. If using alternate terminology doesn't interfere with understanding, use
   alternate terminology.
2. Failing that, do not propagate the terminology beyond the layer of code that
   is performing the interfacing.  Where necessary, use alternative terminology
   at the API boundaries.