@pjdelport if .bro is problematic so is .br, except if you consider that brazilian people are less worth of respect

@rt2022: None of the problems with bro and bro culture apply in the case of br and Brazilians.

Brazilians are not an insecure group of people prone to swarming this thread and this project over an imagined injustice to their "br" identity, and attempting to derail it with logical, cultural, and chemical non-sequiturs.

@pjdelport br is a racial slur for brazilian http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=br . If you consider that an abbreviation for brotli is bad because it's homophone of another word, which is not even a slur, you should also be sensitive the racist meaning of br. Anything else would be very problematic.

@pjdelport

Brazilians are not an insecure group people prone to swarming this thread and this project over an imagined injustice to their "br" identity

Again, neither are people here. Nobody has complained about having their "bro" identity or masculinity threatened. What people are responding to is that the move to rename the content type is reactionary to the point of being ridiculous. Important social issues are not serviced by actions which only serve to ridicule them in the long run.

Further, as stated before, being accepting of such a culture of trigger-awareness really pushes the boundaries of expression. It's one thing if we talk about the use of words where they have an actual social implication, but we are not. We are talking about the purely technological use of an abbreviation which unambiguously refers to a compression algorithm, and was never ever intended to refer to anything else. Nothing more. Nothing less. Nothing else. We are in very deep waters indeed if we need to take care that something like that does not potentially offend anyone or connotate something negative.

@csvan:

Nobody has complained about having their "bro" identity or masculinity threatened.

Really? The comments call this the work of "social terrorists", "radicalized feminists", and a Google "convinced that anything male is bad", and even call for forking the project to put back the "bro", and you don't see this as the response of people who perceive their bro identity or masculinity as under threat?

@mvirkkunen

1. Does freedom of speech protect you from criticism?
2. Is this action actually in response to the outpouring of people that perceive offense?
3. Does empirical evidence support that some genders are underrepresented in the tech industry?
4. Are the underrepresented people present in the industry ever treated as outsiders?
5. Have those who find the underrepresentation problematic been treated with aggression?
6. Have you ever been the subject of catcalls due to your gender?
7. Have you ever been the subject of negging due to your gender?
8. Has your gender ever influenced presumption about your skill, value, utility or "team fit?"
9. Have you been the subject of unwanted sexual advances from within your industry?
10. Have you been subject to attempts to legislate your access to birth control?
11. Have you been subject to attempts to lower your barriers to sexual consent?
12. Have you been excluded from, or imposed upon by, workplace banter due to inappropriate sexual content?
13. Have you been the subject of inappropriate correlation, (in either direction, between your job performance and perceived fitness as a partner?
14. How does the inclusion of underrepresented people challenge your normal behavior?
15. How would you define dissent?
16. How would you define authoritarianism?
17. Where along the spectrum from dissent to authoritarianism does rejecting the enforced norms of an entrenched and aggressive majority fall?
18. When was the last time you discussed any of these issues with someone affected by them?
19. If your answer to any of these was "the header extension for a compression mechanism is not on the scale of any of these things," then why do you even care?

I care because there is no silver bullet solution for inclusion. Yes, this is a tiny decision. But only a trillion tiny choices made right will undo the mess we have made. To connect, we must unravel our shibboleths. As @pjdelport mentioned, this is not a response to outcry. It's just two people erring on the side of harmlessness, and that's fine.

@pjdelport I see two comments by @lineber and @cybrangl above which fits that description, and the latter has nothing to do with masculinity. I don't agree with either of them, and it is hardly a summary of what people in general are feeling. The gist of the majority of reactions I have seen both here and elsewhere is simply that the move is overly reactive, and that is the point I am making.

I agree with @jonathanbruder that this is really a trivial issue in and of itself - there are real and legitimate concerns about the position of women in the tech industry and society at large that are vital to address, and this really just detracts from it. My problem is not that this particular abbreviation in any way has to do with women (or men), but simply that it is endemic of a slowly growing trigger-culture where offense needs to be avoided at every turn - even in places where it simply should not be possible to find in the first place. Further, the observation that "bro" is somehow inherently "misogynistic" screams of Western (especially North American) cultural chauvinism. Where I live we use "bro" all the time, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the deprecation of women - it is simply a more endearing form of "dude". Words are very much relative to their cultural context, and that context really has no relevance when it comes to something as trivial as abbreviating a content type name - a string primarily meant to be read by machines, denoting a computational element rather than any kind of human expression. It is also not a context which gets to be judged by Western cultural standards, especially not when it is written for a global entity like the Internet, which spans all cultures.

Anyway, I feel like I am wasting both our time, so I will just leave the last word to either of you if you want it. There is an interesting discussion to be had about language, cultures and triggers, but this really is not the place for it. All the best.

@csvan You apparently did not read my post beyond a few words. There should be no reason where the tech community caves because someone makes a vague threat about being offended. This seems trivial (and the whole topic really is) but it becomes a slippery slope. Had they changed it for some other reason there would be no outcry. However, they have chosen to set a poor precedent of giving in because someone might get offended. This should never be the case.

My comment about social terrorists is against the people complaining that .bro is somehow "offensive" They look to gain power by making everyone too afraid to offend people. This work is not something that should have even been on the radar, let alone giving into from vague threats of how an extension might offend people. I very much want to see the work continue, but we should never let such social trivialities dictate the process. What happened next? Do we need to change the compression because it creates files of 666 bytes and we can't have that or fear of offending someone else?

This would have been a non-issue had they stuck to their guns and left the extension.

@cybrangl if I misunderstood or misconstrued your comment I apologise.

However, they have chosen to set a poor precedent of giving in because someone might get offended. This should never be the case.

Agreed, this is pretty much my argument as well. Especially since this is a case where a certain culture is given an unreasonable prerogative to determine what people from other cultures might (or should be) offended by. The fact that they sealed the deal by consulting by somebody from "the North American sphere" just drives it home - it's Western cultural chauvinism.

What happened next? Do we need to change the compression because it creates files of 666 bytes and we can't have that or fear of offending someone else?

This was basically what I was arguing earlier re: avoiding extensions like .alah or .jsus because they may be deemed blasphemous by adherents to the Islamic or Christians faiths (not limited to religion of course).

I believe in "do no harm", and that we should avoid offense where it is reasonable. Extending this to content names and file extensions is ridiculous and plain harmful to that cause - it simply opens related social causes to ridicule and charges of extremism.

This is a minor annoyance as downstream projects like mine https://github.com/fxfactorial/brozip have to change code. That said its pretty sad that outside cultural forces, many of whom have nothing to do with tech at all, are outright influencing technical decisions.

The moral of the story is that its easier to just bend over than deal with the annoying and distracting noise makers.

We already have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.sys and no one cares.
Having .bro would be just fair.

@fxfactorial
The moral of the story is that its easier to just bend over than deal with the annoying and distracting noise makers.

That is one of the reasons why myself and others are making a big stink. While the choice of extension really has not technical issue, I think it is important that we make it known that simply "giving in" is not the right choice. If they give in because it "offends" or "annoys" people, they should understand that you will always find people "offended" or "annoyed" and simply giving in will not suddenly make it all better. You only give fuel for the next person to interject their personal agenda into something that has nothing to do with social issues. Normally I would have sat back and just watched the process, but now I feel I have to keep us from setting a precedent that will haunt, this and many more projects, for a long time.

Just a note: if you are going to "consult" about this nonsense, at least take the time to get more than a narrow viewpoint of the subject.

I have asked a patriotism friend from Brazil, and she advised against br. We have found a compromise that satisfies us, so we don't need to discuss this further. Even if we don't understand why people are upset from our cultural standpoint, they would be (unnecessarily) upset and this is enough reason not to use it.

Lets just use .b or .brotlithefriendlyfilecompressionalgorithmnotthederogatoryterm

(With apologies for the snark. I don't want to keep repeating the same comments.)

@cybrangl:

That is one of the reasons why myself and others are making a big stink.

Translation: I don't understand that this change was made to side-step bros who make big stinks, so I am joining the bros in making a big stink.

While the choice of extension really has not technical issue, I think it is important that we make it known that simply "giving in" is not the right choice.

Translation: I can't imagine that the project maintainers would willingly make a decision that does not put bros first, so I'm going to imagine they were threatened into it somehow.

If they give in because it "offends" or "annoys" people, they should understand that you will always find people "offended" or "annoyed" and simply giving in will not suddenly make it all better.

Translation: I intend to keep offending and annoying people until I have my way. I sense no irony in this.

You only give fuel for the next person to interject their personal agenda into something that has nothing to do with social issues.

Translation: When bros interject, it's a social issue. When other people interject, it's their personal agenda.

Normally I would have sat back and just watched the process, but now I feel I have to keep us from setting a precedent that will haunt, this and many more projects, for a long time.

Translation: It haunts me to imagine a future where projects don't prioritize the feelings of bros above others.

Just a note: if you are going to "consult" about this nonsense, at least take the time to get more than a narrow viewpoint of the subject.

Translation: In a conversation dominated by men, a single female voice makes me feel excluded. We should consult more bros to get a balanced viewpoint.

Someone said above « if everyone was being rational here, we would simply move on, but instead, we have a crowd of offended bros proclaiming that this is some kind of phantom attack on their masculinity ». I think the commenter so totally missed the point his/her argument becomes ridiculous, it's a lobbyist's argument and certainly not a rational interpretation of the situation. I don't see any reaction of that kind in any comment above. I see people shocked by a decision made based on extremely limited input and the assumption that, potentially, maybe, in the worst case, the .bro extension would be refused by a registration authority that has not expressed any reaction yet. I see an intrusion of lobbyists inside tech about something totally harmless. Even a feminist like myself who hates machos and misogynists does not understand how one can perceive ".bro" as offensive. If these three letters came from "Brothers", ok, well, in the last resort scenario the bro file extension would be let's say colloquial, not offensive. But no, it comes from "Brotli" that comes from "Brötli", a small bread!
All in all, an extremely limited set of people (apparently countable on one single hand), who would probably have never found .bro offensive or annoying because hey that's the abbreviation of Brötli and people do have a brain don't they, are proactively protected based on so minimal input it's laughable while much larger AND non-segregationist feedback is neglected. So my gut feeling is that this is a counterproductive decision based on the potential harm a lobby could inflict - and then a decision probably based on fear -, this is not a decision based on sanity.
In CSS, we dismissed the "finger" value for the cursor property because pointing a finger is strongly offensive in well only half of the world... That was non-negligible input. I don't think it's the case here.
We're software developers, and good software developers don't care about sex, gender, or any other personal detail of other software developers. We care about skills, efficiency, good design, good code and rough consensus. In that light, .br does not seem to reach any consensus and neither does the dismissal of .bro, as the abbreviation of a word meaning small bread. Draw your own conclusion.
As a final note, cul and mst files are from the Windows world, the former from the old IconForge software, the latter are configuration files for packages. In French, cul means ass and mst is the common acronym for sexually transmitted infection. Certainly badly chosen in an international environment but nobody here cares because hey, they're only file extensions!

Translation: In a conversation dominated by men, a single female voice makes me feel excluded. We should consult more bros to get a balanced viewpoint.

You had bad coffee or caught a speeding ticket on your way to office this morning or what?
It's far more "Equidistribution being a principle of the world, there are stupid ideas and stupid voices everywhere in all communities and maybe one single voice is far from enough. Gathering more input before decision could not harm in any way since we do consider the issue seriously".

We're software developers, and good software developers don't care about sex, gender, or any other personal detail of other software developers.

It depends on your definition of "good". The facts show us that the software industry is terrible at behaving with women and other minorities. Accept it and deal with it.

Also, it's not about a file extension but a "content encoding type" passed over HTTP.

Even a feminist like myself who hates machos and misogynists does not understand how one can perceive ".bro" as offensive

Because it's not your native language? Because you don't live in the US? There's a cultural connotation about "bro" and it is quite misogynist.

The point is, even if here "bro" does not "brother", it will eventually be used that way by morrons to make sick misogynist jokes.
By using "br" you avoid that.
It's a simple modification which will avoid tons of crap to women inside and outside the industry.

The call is simple to make. And the developers did it right (and by themself, no threat).

All actions taken "pro"-women always dig up threads like this one, saying it's "useless" or "over-reacting" or "we can't say anything anymore!" "censorship!"... It just shows how hard the society don't wanna change toward more equality and make efforts to not discriminate against women.

Thanks to the developers who made that change!
It's small but ... lots of small changes can help!

@fallen

Because it's not your native language? Because you don't live in the US? There's a cultural connotation about "bro" and it is quite misogynist.

This is at the heart of what many people are taking real issue with here - the fact that something may have a negative connotation in one culture (a particular brand of American culture in this case) should not be generalised to imply that it has the same connotation in other cultures, let alone is offensive to people from these cultures.

You are talking about the naming of an HTTP content type, an element of the most global piece of technology ever invented by humanity - the Internet. No single culture has a prerogative in determining what is offensive in that context, especially not when it concerns something so banal as a content type abbreviation - a string which is not even primarily meant for humans to read(!!), and which carries no cultural or social implications in itself whatsoever.

it will eventually be used that way by morrons to make sick misogynist jokes.

Everything can be exploited by malicious people for malicious ends, no matter how benign the intentions behind creating it were. Deal with it, and don't let it get in the way of purely technical decisions. There will be morons as long as there is a human species.

If you are going to censor a word like 'bro' because it might offend or lead to harassment, because of what it may connotate in a single culture (and I am not even convinced it is unambiguously sexist even in that culture), you seriously need to ask where this censorship will ever stop. Hint: it won't. You are almost certain to find an abbreviation which is offensive in some context. People have already pointed out that br is an offensive slur against Brazilians. I don't know if that is true since I am neither Brazilian nor much of a gamer, but that should not stop the abbreviation from being used either. It's an abbreviation for a piece of tech - nothing else. You only see deeper meaning if you want to, because it was never there to begin with.

It's a simple modification which will avoid tons of crap to women inside and outside the industry.

Tell me, has the existence of man pages and vag files resulted in waves of misogyny? No? Exactly. Why? Because people are not stupid - they do not read social commentary into abbreviations unless they have clearly malicious intentions behind doing so (in which case abbreviations do not matter, they will find a way to be malicious anyway).

There are real and pressing matters which pertain to the state of women in both the tech/IT sectors and society at large, issues which we who are male in particular have a responsibility to acknowledge and address. The abbreviation of a content type has nothing to do with that, but is rather endemic of a wider cultural problem of trigger awareness. It will do nothing to help address the issues that are most pressing (gender-based pay discrimination, interview bias, skill assumptions, etc). Rather, it merely offers ammunition for those who would trivialise and mock these concerns, as you can already see plenty of on SlashDot and Reddit regarding this case.

Hi, i think the .br is incorrect to. Becaouse in the chemistry br is the bromine symbol. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromine) Who discoverd this? Antoine Jérôme Balard, and he was a male.
And what about the national anti bromineant organization? I as a NABO member, extremely freak out.

I think the .b is more correct, but the .b like bisexual so i don't know....

Guys, it is serius????

While I think the decision to rename was a bad one, your behavior is extremely childish @thelordofcheese ...

@thelordofcheese

1. That's not me you are quoting.
2. Post with your main profile, trolling coward.

Bruh....

@fallen Do you have a technical reason for this or is it simply a way for you to pressure someone into falling into line of your personal agenda. Should we force your to change your name because some Christian may find the idea of a fallen (angel) offensive? At this point you are getting offended simply to be offended and dragging the world down with you. When I tossed out the idea of social terrorist, you are the type of person I had in mind. You are trying to assert your personal feelings as the only reasonable way and threaten a social hellstorm if people don't fall into line. This type of reasoning is fallacious and has no merit or place here. Had the developers decided to change it for any other reason (Bromine being a developers favorite chemical, etc.) I would have not batted an eye. But for someone to come in and pressure change for no other reason than for them to feel superior, it has got to stop. I don't want to see logical decisions changed because you can't seem to have the good sense to separate the extension from some misplaced gender identity crisis you are having. Your outlook and pressure on the group is not only not warranted by childish and immature.

@pjdelport

I love how you decided you had a single clue about what I was saying. You have twisted my words and the very meaning of other words to fit your egotistical view. You have shown you have no concept of the ideas I presented and are willing to make up things to attempt to your point across. Forget the idea of logic and discourse, you would rather put words into people's mouths to make a strawman because you cannot fathom someone would disagree with you. I am not "for" bros or men. I am against egotistical social ostriches like yourself who would rather put your head in the sand and cover your ears yelling "la la la, I can't heard you" than try to understand why your "adjustment" is not appropriate here. This whole subject is inappropriate and people like me, and the others making fun of the issue by complaining they have had their bro feeling hurt, are trying to right a sinking ship. I am sorry you have such a thin skin and cannot for the life of you see any other person's point of view, but you really have no place in this, male or female. You have completely failed to understand the point because you are too busy listening to the sound of your own voice.

Why not just call it BCDF for brotli data compression format to avoid both confusing and negative connotation?
Or just B if you need to keep it short?

I suggest changing "bro" extension to polish equivalent "ziom".

.com offends me because .communist. Please change to .cap for .capitalist to appease my Western influence.

Agree on the point that the character assassination and ad hominems in this thread weakens the point. If you're in a professional environment and your tolerance is so low seeing .bro impacts your productivity or sensibilities in some way, you're going to have a long painful time in a professional environment.

And this is from a North American. People in this thread are saying "Well it's not just North Americans on the internet" but it's worth noting a great deal of us don't even take offense to the term bro to begin with.

A dumbass online gamer who also hails from Brazil but is ignorant of rules and disrespectful of fellow gamers. Uses his or her lack of knowledge of the English language to try and get away with breaking rules

What a great change!

@cyrrill

Great post. For the rest of the community, I apologize for losing my temper. I will admit, I would have been watching from the sidelines had this not happened. There are many talented people working on this project, both in the main project and the downstream forks. I don't feel I have the background to really contribute more than they have. However, this issue has broader ramifications and has made me feel I had to speak up or let us slip deeper into chaos. I really dislike the fact that a few people have manufactured a crisis for the sole purpose of coming to the rescue. I normally would like to see the tech discussion as far removed from the political spectrum as possible, but the very act of making the change, based on a supposed slight, sets a bad example. Google had a great deal of clout in the computer world, and this could be seen as a precedent and opening the door for others to insert their personal agenda into a technical discussion.
We must understand that just because someone is offended does not make the action or words offensive. While it is a good idea to avoid blatant slights, this is really pushing the boundaries. I think we should look at the technical and standards ramifications of this as well. The standard, for good or bad, has been to make the extension an subset of the program where possible. The most logical choice was picked as .bro. This was not done for the "brosphere" as some would like to make you believe, but because this was must effectively associated with the project name. If you believe there is some injustice in the naming convention, it should be brought up as such and addressed. So far I have only seen allusions to some form of harm that has no facts to back up the claim. Without any facts and debate we are in the realm of speculation and knee-jerk reactions. It is in poor practice to simply make technical changes because of some unfounded and unproven statements.
For these reasons, I would kindly ask the developers to reverse the decision. If you have a technical, or founded reason for future change, I am all for it. Ultimately it is the developers who have the final say, but I would implore them to rethink the basis for their decision.

I really dislike the fact that a few people have manufactured a crisis for the sole purpose of coming to the rescue.

This.

LOL at all the right wing hypocrites whining about Google's decision.

@jibal I'm actually left wing so that lol's

Fine, I LOL at the hypocrites regardless of their (claimed) ideology.

Okay, thanks for letting us know

This is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. I've actually lost respect for the team behind this project for bringing gender issues into programming. Some idiots can't tell context and see ".bro" and think it's an attack on them and you bow down to them instead of saying "This is not a gender issue, go away"?

People who are taking this as an opportunity to slander feminist women in particular seem blissfully unaware that the change was proposed by a man, and approved by other men. Leave your prejudices at the door.

@Aramiyo the team stated clearly that they themselves did not understand how it could be offensive, but choose to err on the side of caution. The change itself was proposed by a (male) dev at Mozilla. Whether or not this was a wise decision from a cultural standpoint has been the entire debate in this thread (except the usual trolls and contrarians, of course), but make sure you understand where the idea itself came from.

@csvan

So they changed it from one possibly offensive term to another?

A dumbass online gamer who also hails from Brazil but is ignorant of rules and disrespectful of fellow gamers. Uses his or her lack of knowledge of the English language to try and get away with breaking rules

Offensive, I sexually identify as a Brazil and I find this extremely offensive. I am also a feminist so I think that .bro IS SEVERELY oppressive toward us females. Please rename the file extension to .fem or Google will be boycotted by all of Tumblr.

pathetic

That whole issue would resolve itself if the algorithm were simply renamed "brothel" and encoding types ".hep" or ".gon" used randomly. Not a single person could be offended. Well, maybe a couple.

How about "manzier" with ".bwb" instead?

"Can we get some support?" could be their new slogan.

.... walks away

Let me see if I got this all correct.

1. Change was made to term no one was emotionally attached to avoid expending energy arguing a non-issue.
2. Arguments happened anyway, mostly from people who were offended that people might be offended about references to people who seem offended when people are offended by actions that are subjectively offensive to some. (Yeah, parse that one if you can 😉)
3. Assorted "media" outlets get offended by the offence and the offending content, post angst.

   Commenters get offended by the angst, the non-issueness of it all, and seemingly about half the people already offended.

4. Bystanders with common sense (and likely the original devs too) hang their heads in frustrated resignation and head to the nearest supplier of alcohol.
5. Nobody can understand why nobody and everybody is taking this issue so seriously. Everybody agrees with nobody's understanding.
6. The universe wonders where it all went wrong and apologises for creating intelligent life in the first place.

Although step 6 might be pending confirmation.

Could someone who is actually offended by this change in some way please explain why it's so important to be so offended by the slightest suggestion that people in this industry are easily offended? I ask for a friend... I haven't actually told him about any of this yet, but I expect him to be offended by response to the entire matter so I want to get my offended counter arguments ready for this offending insinuation.

faith['humanity'] -= 1;

Could someone who is actually offended by this change in some way please explain why it's so important to be so offended by the slightest suggestion that people in this industry are easily offended?

You want to ask for one of the original Brotli devs, who in the linked Mozilla ticket ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=366559 ) says:

I have asked a feminist friend from the North American culture-sphere, and she advised against bro.

I've read all the comments on this commit and I'm still confused. Maybe it's because I'm from the US but I don't understand how the usage of or the word itself bro is misogynistic. Can somebody please explain?

@cyrrill I don't think reversing a silly decision would be silly at all.

@slx7R4GDZM

Maybe it's because I'm from the US but I don't understand how the usage of or the word itself bro is misogynistic.

If you are from the US and cannot understand why it is misogynistic, then I doubt anyone else will, either. The reason this even happened was because an American developer let his cultural bias dictate what the rest of humanity should associate the word "bro" with. Nevermind the fact that the word itself has absolutely no social meaning in this context.

@HLbBOyYfFI ah, but Jyrki didn't say she was offended by it... Jyrki said she advised against it, and that's different. For example, I'm not offended by people who smoke but I would strongly advise against smoking because of the health impacts. Nor did I ask about 'bro' itself... I specifically referred to the change, which was made not because someone was offended but rather because it was stupidly trivial to change and would ideally have prevented offending anyone if not for this crazy meta-offence.

@slx7R4GDZM there is a subset of a subset of boys (I refuse to dignify them by saying they're men) who have the misguided notion that it is a good thing to display traits such as excess consumption of alcohol, vulgar interpersonal interaction, reckless behaviour and a general lack of respect for anyone but themselves. There is also a tendency, but not a rule, for these people to be particularly rude towards women, to consider themselves superior to women, and to treat women as little more than sexual objects. Since, afaik, this nonsense has grown largely out of frat houses and their culture, "bros" is really just a more general version of "frat bros"... the latest generation of the "old boys club" phenomena that's existed for probably as long as the concept of society has. I will hasten to point out that bros aren't really reflective of fraternities or the Greek system as a whole, they're just the loud minority that the media and Hollywood have convinced us matches the whole.

Sadly this minority are particularly loud and vocal, especially any time a woman asserts herself or has someone advocate for her (both are irrationally viewed as a threat). And, unfortunately, many people who have only a mild match this description have become associated with the most extreme cases... leading to what seems to be a general trend of mob mentality. There are some examples of knee-jerk anti-feminist reactions in this comment thread, but a particularly good study of the problem can be found in GamerGate. I doubt most people with an anti-feminism reaction actually dislike women any more than most feminists actually dislike men. It's all stereotypes and hivemind, as groups of people devolve to the lowest common denominators.

It's also unfair to say women are free of this kind of problem, since there actually are misandrists who use feminism as a cover for their anti-social behaviour. Again, minority of extremists tainting the the majority through misappropriation and fuelling conflicts... you'll find it in everything from Islam to video gamers, and until we collectively learn to consider people as individuals who also human instead of the enemy... well I can't really see humans reaching anything near their potential for good.

There is a saying, one that makes me very sad in it's present truth... People are stupid, panicky and stubborn. Individuals might be incredible and intelligent, yet get enough individuals in a group and you suddenly find that people are neither.

The whole core of the problem is an American developer letting his cultural bias dictate what the rest of humanity should associate the word "bro" with

Presumably this is somehow different than a small group of men letting their cultural bias dictate what the rest of the humanity should associate the word "feminist" with?

@kaithar not at all. The problem here is that "feminist" is a rather well defined and understood term which will mean essentially the same thing no matter where it is used. "Bro" simply isn't. Most cases I have seen the latter used (including where I live) it has no negative connotation whatsoever, let alone a misogynistic one - it is simply a short form of "brother" (obviously), and a more endearing form of "dude" or "buddy". Reversely, I of course do not claim that my cultures understanding of the word should somehow dictate how people in your setting interpret it.

As somebody who happens to be a feminist, the only times I see the former term being misused is when it is being wielded by MRAs and other idiots who have no intention of using it in its proper sense anyway.

@csvan I suspect you're more likely going to need to take issue with far more than a single developer if you wish to complain about people giving "Bro" a bad image, since it's a subculture calling themselves that which has led to the association.
Realistically, this change hasn't actually told anyone that they should associate the word that way, it's just saying that some people do. If the word in question was a random term that turned out to be a really offensive slur in a foreign language, and changing it was this trivial, would you have a problem with that?

As developers, our job should include considering how other people might interact with our work and behaving accordingly. While it's impossible to avoid offending someone somewhere, we have a responsibility to make reasonable efforts in our use of language and visuals to stay in neutral territory. The more exposure our work has, the more important it is to use tact and diplomacy in the creation of that work. "With great power comes great responsibility" and all that.

I do accept there are times when we can and should create things that provoke responses, however we do that intentionally for that purpose and should be even more responsible in exercising that capacity.

@kaithar

I suspect you're more likely going to need to take issue with far more than a single developer if you wish to complain about people giving "Bro" a bad image

I highly doubt I will need to take issue with a single developer outside certain areas of the United States. As one of the Brotli devs already stated: "Even if we don't understand why people are upset from our cultural standpoint, they [i.e. certain Americans who were consulted as representative of their group] would be (unnecessarily) upset". There are two problems with this:

1. The world is a big place, filled with various cultures and value systems. To try and accommodate all of them is probably not even feasible.
2. As I will expand on below, the accommodation here is being made at a purely technical level - a content-type abbreviation - which is not even meant to be read by any human from the potentially affected cultures anyway.

As developers, our job should include considering how other people might interact with our work and behaving accordingly

I agree, and that is exactly why this particular example is so (arguably) ridiculous : you are talking about a content-type abbreviation, a string which is supposed to be read by a machine, not an ordinary user, and which does not even carry any meaning in human language on its own, other than the phrase it is abbreviating. The only humans who may actually need to see the string are typically developers, sysadmins or other tech people, and those are very unlikely to understand it as anything but what it is. They will know that it has no social or cultural connotation whatsoever - it is simply a short form of "brotli".

I think Brazil is "BR", so we never misunderstand them.

@csvan

It's true that there are far too many cultures and value systems to accomodate all of them, but does that excuse us if we know that we're offending someone? This kind of change is very much an effort vs impact consideration... the effort was essentially zero at this stage, or should have been if not for people objecting.

[...] a string which is supposed to be read by a machine, not an ordinary user

Assuming that other people aren't going to read something is always a terrible assumption to make and tends to be proven false most of the time. Case in point... this change shouldn't have had an audience of a few dozen people, instead it got republished all over the place. It's an issue only because people are making it one.

The only humans who may actually need to see the string are typically developers, sysadmins or other tech people, and those are very unlikely to understand it as anything but what it is.

If the people seeing it are all so enlightened, why is anyone making a fuss in the first place?

@kaithar
since it's a subculture calling themselves that which has led to the association.

Wtf? Where did you come up with that? We can now just make up facts? How did this become and issue? Where does the point of being offended become absurdity?

but Jyrki didn't say she was offended by it

It does imply that there is a subculture that would be offended. There isn't one in any reasonable terms. This was just pushing a personal ideology. I'm a little let down that the developers would simply listen to one person and decide that it was a fact. When do we make such decisions based on political views?

• It's an issue only because people are making it one.*

It is only an issue because someone made it an issue at first. There was not technical reason to change it. Someone unilaterally decided that it was offensive and that we should make adjustments to technical matters because they thought some minority might be offended.

If the people seeing it are all so enlightened, why is anyone making a fuss in the first place?

Because someone used this as en excuse to push a political/personal issue where it should not be. We are making an issue because we don't want to set a precedent for others to interject their own views into the technical discussion. If you don't care, why not support the change to the original extension?

Could someone who is actually offended by this change in some way please explain why it's so important to be so offended by the slightest suggestion that people in this industry are easily offended?

Not offended so much as worried that we could potentially see a slippery slope of perceived slights be pushed into the discussion. I am only arguing for the change to the original extension as an statement that we won't let political of ideological views determine the technical outcome of a project. As I stated before, had they decided to change it for any other reason (such as personal favorite color being brown, favorite chemical Bromine, need to make it match the HTML symbol for break etc.) I would have been all in favor of it.

And if you care so little about the subject, why are you still arguing?

@cybrangl

Wtf? Where did you come up with that? We can now just make up facts? How did this become and issue? Where does the point of being offended become absurdity?

Uh, assuming you are being serious... it's an extremely basic logical progression.
A subset of the "frat boy" culture refers to themselves as bros, behaviour by this group is the source of the negative association, not everyone using the term bro is associated with this group or behaves in the same way. If you can't construct the statement from that then you probably shouldn't be debating with adults.
I'm not sure what the rest of your question there has to do with anything, I didn't say it was an issue or anything, just that association wasn't the doing of an single person or even group.

It does imply that there is a subculture that would be offended. There isn't one in any reasonable terms. This was just pushing a personal ideology. I'm a little let down that the developers would simply listen to one person and decide that it was a fact. When do we make such decisions based on political views?

Again, that's nothing to do with what I said, indeed you've taken it so out of context that it has little meaning left.
None of what you said here has demonstrable basis in fact or reality... Actually it reads more like the personal ideology that you are so against. There was no offence or politics involved in this decision until commentators decided to add some. You're going to have a very rough life if you think that someone has to be offended or ideologically motivated to be able to give advice about something.

It is only an issue because someone made it an issue at first. There was not technical reason to change it. Someone unilaterally decided that it was offensive and that we should make adjustments to technical matters because they thought some minority might be offended.

Again, this is a blatant misrepresentation of the facts. It was only made to be an issue after the change had occurred. Not having a "technical reason", and that is a stupidly vague description, shouldn't be a reason for not making a change when there is a good reason to. Although if you want to argue about the need for a vague technical reason, most of the popular compression formats on *nix based systems use two letter extensions (eg: .gz .bz .7z)... Irrelevant? Yes, but so was your need for a technical reason.

Because someone used this as en excuse to push a political/personal issue where it should not be. We are making an issue because we don't want to set a precedent for others to interject their own views into the technical discussion.

That is exactly what you are doing by making it an issue. It wasn't political until people like yourself made it so.

If you don't care, why not support the change to the original extension?

That is the dumbest question I've seen all week. I don't care, so why the hell would I support another change that is motivated purely by political agenda?
I don't care, thus I want it to be left as it is and for people to stop being babies about it.

Not offended so much as worried that we could potentially see a slippery slope of perceived slights be pushed into the discussion. I am only arguing for the change to the original extension as an statement that we won't let political of ideological views determine the technical outcome of a project. As I stated before, had they decided to change it for any other reason (such as personal favorite color being brown, favorite chemical Bromine, need to make it match the HTML symbol for break etc.) I would have been all in favor of it.

The reads like a tour de force of logical fallacies, and none of them make any sense. The only perceived slights being injected in to this discussion are coming from the people crying about the feminist agenda. Up to that point the discussion and change were handled in a mature and professional way.

And if you care so little about the subject, why are you still arguing?

Because some of us have to be rational grown ups to balance all the knee jerking.

@kaithar

So a potential offence for frat-boy culture is okay to change it to an actual slang used to offend another culture? 10/10 change.

A dumbass online gamer who also hails from Brazil but is ignorant of rules and disrespectful of fellow gamers. Uses his or her lack of knowledge of the English language to try and get away with breaking rules

huehuehue brasil es número uno!

That is exactly what you are doing by making it an issue. It wasn't political until people like yourself made it so.

It was political to begin with. "Potentially offensive" is the political speech of choice for the increasingly totalitarian thought-policing left. It's absolutely intellectually dishonest to pretend otherwise. This isn't the first time "they've" (see: thought-policing potentially offended left) has pulled bullshit like this.

@kyokou now you're reaching.

@kaithar
But "bro" wasn't reaching? Is it only "reaching" when it doesn't agree with your political ideology?

Even Brazilians shit talk the "hue br's" type.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPJzkiPLbos