Due to racism problems, Google has replaced whitelist and blacklist words in Chrome code with allowlist and blocklist. Github too announced it will rename Master/slave to neutral terms, now Mozilla has joined them. The organization has gone ahead and deprecated the Master Password in Firefox and replaced it with the Primary Password.
Primary Password in Firefox
Firefox 83 coming on November 17 with JavaScript Performance improvements, has got the change already.
Update: this change happened with Firefox 79.
You should expect Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, and other products to follow the suit. The above Screenshot is from the beta version.
Mozilla considers the Master word terminology as exclusionary or derogatory.
In a help article that highlights “Primary Password is replacing Master Password”, Mozilla notes ” Firefox is removing terminology from a browser that has been identified as derogatory or exclusionary. ”
The company says they “have plenty of alternatives that are more inclusive, more descriptive and non-racist. ” and “Master-slave is a metaphor that perpetuates racism”.
“For this reason, all instances of Master Password are being replaced with Primary Password in the Firefox browsers and products”.
Mozilla says this being done in accordance with the “Derogatory language” section of the Mozilla Community Participation Guidelines.
Going forward, you may never see master/slave and Whitelist and blacklist being used in open-source software code or in the other Programming languages.
The Master Password in Firefox is going to be renamed to Primary Password and nothing changes the way you use Primary Password in the Mozilla browser.
What’s your take on this change by Mozilla in Firefox? Let us know in the comments below.
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Mozilla Stops Firefox 82 rollout due to Numerous Issues
Firefox 81 is out with Credit Card autofill and new Alpenglow theme
This is political correctness run amok in the US. This usage (“master password”) denotes control, but it is not remotely the same as “master/slave” as is claimed in the user documentation (last link) and by the people who opened the first two bugs. The third link says any post objecting will be deleted and the account referred for review.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1649482 (the most interesting comments so far)
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1644807
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1643142 (delete’em)
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/primary-password-replacing-master-password (poor logic)