svn commit: r362422 - head/sbin/dump

[Warner Losh]

On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 7:27 AM Hans Petter Selasky <hps at selasky.org> wrote:

> On 2020-06-20 13:10, Rodney W. Grimes wrote:
> >> Author: imp
> >> Date: Sat Jun 20 04:19:17 2020
> >> New Revision: 362422
> >> URL:https://svnweb.freebsd.org/changeset/base/362422
> >>
> >> Log:
> >>    Increase the whimsy in this file by famring dump's work out to
> minions. Adjust
> >>    variables accordingly. Thankfully, we are able to do this without
> additional
> >>    banana expenditures.
> > This flys in the face of its intent and as a "commit" is more
> > racially biased than the code was!
> >
>
> Hi Warner,
>
> Maybe a stupid question, but is this the correct meaning or description
> of minion?
>
> https://www.google.com/search?q=minions
>
> minion; plural noun: minions
>
>      a follower or underling of a powerful person, especially a servile
> or unimportant one.
>      "he gets oppressed minions like me to fob them off"
>
> "Minion" is still a person, like "slave" is, so I must say I agree with
> Rodney about this, I don't see how this makes it any better? Can you
> explain?
>

For me, Minions come from the Despicable Me movies and sequels. They work
for Gru, who pays them for their services. They love Bananas and often do
crazy things for a banana. They work for Gru willingly. They are free to
leave at any time. They are sad at the prospect of Gru having to lay them
off.

Minions are also, as you point out, employed by the powerful to accomplish
things. Key word here is 'employed'. Servile doesn't mean 'involuntary
servitude' but rather 'an excessive willingness to please.' Underling means
only that them are below them on the org chart. There's no inherent
implication of an abusive relationship, per se, though that happens as in
any power relationship between people.

And the extensive searching I did before the commit showed no complaints
about the movies, or that this term had some coded, racist history. Or any
other coded history that's problematic. Or any overt history for that
matter.

SaltStack uses it as their name for agents that carry out tasks, for
example.

So what am I missing?

Warner