Let's stop using the slavery analogy (master/slave). Any ideas? This was prompted by studying some of the differences between MySQL and MariaDB... where the use of the terms of "master" and "slave" is making me want to puke. I would propose leader/follower or even guru/disciple... Seriously... any other thoughts/ideas? I will happily email the results of this feedback to both organizations. |
This is a good point. Any node in a robust network (healthy society) has the capacity to lead should a current lead node fail or simply have exhausted it's alloted time in the leadership position (e.g. for fair-sharing of energy or maintenance resources). This network simply needs to be structured to support a dynamic shift in power. However, even distributed systems typically use some degree of heirarchy to improve efficiency (1). Just look at the Borg Queen herself (2).
So, you probably will always need some term to refer to the striations in nodal roles, even if those roles are very temporarily assigned (i.e. the mobility of nodes accross those striations is fluid).
FWIW, I don't find "master/slave" any more or less offensive than "Little/Big Endian".
1. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://...