There Is No .bro In Brotli: Google/Mozilla Engineers Nix File Type As Offensive

theodp writes: Several weeks ago, Google launched Brotli, a new open source compression algorithm for the web. Since then, controversy broke out over the choice of 'bro' as the content encoding type. "We are hoping to establish a file ending .bro for brotli compressed files, a command line tool 'bro' for compressing and uncompressing brotli files, and a accept/content encoding type 'bro'," explained Google software engineer Jyrki Alakuijala. "Can I talk you out of it?," replied Mozilla SW engineer Patrick McManus. "'bro' has a gender problem, even though the dual meaning is unintentional. It comes of[f] misogynistic and unprofessional due to the world it lives in." Despite some pushback from commenters, a GitHub commit made by Google's Zoltan Szabadka shows that there will be no '.bro' in Brotli. "I have asked a feminist friend from the North American culture-sphere, and she advised against bro," explained Alakuijala. "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."

Comments

The North American culture-sphere?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who says that?

Re:Dear SJW morons

[kheldan]

Get a sense of humor

Friend, there is something I've been saying for decades now: The surest way to ruin a Good Thing is to get a bunch of people involved in it. That's what's happening here: There are too many people in the world, and more to the point too many people on the Internet, and it's just ruining everything for everyone because whereas it's actually a small percentage of people who might get offended at something so small, that small percentage represents a huge number of people, who are not going to allow themselves to be ignored. Case in point: I work at a large technology corporation. There is a small software tool that developers use, and a 32-bit hexadecimal value that shows up in one dialog box defaults to the hex value "DEADBEEF". Clever, right? Also harmless and not at all intended to be offensive. But someone got offended and they made them change it. Stupid, isn't it? Get enough people together and collectively they don't have a sense of humor anymore.

Re: What next?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're too late.

http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/FreeBSD's_man_page_misogyny

Note the example there with gendered terms... Is being called fucking HATRED OF WOMEN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7121268.
Bro pages (man pages with example) are raked over the coals

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Man-Page/
Man pages now have disclaimers to explain that man is short for manual, so please don't be offended

This HOWTO explains what you should bear in mind when you are going to write on-line documentation -- a so-called man page -- that you want to make accessible via the man(1) command. Throughout this HOWTO, a manual entry is simply referred to as a man page, regardless of actual length and without sexist intention.

Political-correctness gone insane ..

[nickweller]

Yet another example of political-correctness gone insane. People are not upset, some SJWarrier decides to be insulted by 'bro' and therefore it must be changed. Anyone who says different is a misogynist. Enough of the PC bullshit already. If some people decide to be insulted by some aspect of contemporary culture then that's their prerogative. It's got nothing to do with me, I am under no compulsion to adjust my behaviour or opinions to suit them.

Re:What next?

[angel'o'sphere]

Actually one of the first "better man page browsers" I ever installed on unix systems (around 1990) was called "woman".