###### tags: `blog` `D&I`
# Ansible Inclusive Language Update

During this development cycle the [Ansible](https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/devel/index.html) project has made significant progress in our goals to make our community and code more welcoming and inclusive. With the release of ansible-core 2.11, harmful terminology in the Ansible codebase has been deprecated and will come with new replacement terms available for use. These changes will follow our standard deprecation cycle to give users time to adapt.

## Why this? Why now?

This past summer was a watershed moment in world culture that placed a very stark spotlight on inequities around the world and lingering societal remnants of the past and present effects of racism and other harmful prejudices. Ansible recognizes that racism comes in many forms, and that some of the most prevalent and insidious forms are found in how our past history intersects with everyday language.

In the spirit of harm reduction, and in keeping with a saying we have: “Be kind, Be open, Be accountable, Be Ansible”, a coalition within the Ansible community reviewed the ansible/ansible codebase and documentation and made alternative terminology recommendations across the board. This is an effort which will continue to be introspective and sensitive to the effects of language and terminology on our community and the broader world.

## What are the changes that were made?

### Master branches are now Main

Over the summer we updated the branch naming for the collections maintained by Ansible. Going forward main will be the default branch for all repositories in the ansible and ansible-collections Github organizations.

### Deprecated Terminology

We have reviewed the [ansible-core](https://github.com/ansible/ansible) codebase for harmful language and made changes where these terms were found in the [code](https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/70028) and in [documentation](https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/70082). Harmful language will remain available via aliases for a full deprecation cycle (4 releases) to ensure users have an opportunity to update their configurations and usage of Ansible. These changes include:

|Deprecated Term|New Term Available in ansible-core 2.11|
|:----------:|:----------:|
|whitelist (Examples: callback_whitelist, DEFAULT_CALLBACK_WHITELIST)|enabled (Examples: callback_enabled, CALLBACKS_ENABLED)|
blacklist (Examples: BLACKLIST_EXTS, BLACKLIST_DIRS)|reject (Examples: REJECT_EXTS, REJECTLIST_DIRS)|
master machine / node|controller machine / node|

## When

These changes will be included in the Ansible 4.0 package, which will be released May 18th, 2021.

## How To Get Involved
The Ansible community maintains a large number of repositories and code bases. We do not believe our work is done and the effort to eradicate harmful language from the project will continue. Red Hat is proud to be a participating organization in the [Inclusive Naming Initiative](https://inclusivenaming.org/) and the Ansible project looks forward to continuing to work with the community to make Ansible the most welcoming and inclusive space it can be.

We invite members of the Ansible communiity to join in this effort by connecting with our Diversity and Inclusion [working group](https://github.com/ansible/community/wiki/Diversity).