In order to increase the inclusiveness of the OVS project it is desirable to use inclusive language in the project. This includes in the code and moreover commits to the repository.

The scope of this task is to define guidelines for inclusive language to aid the role of maintainers in accepting commits which use inclusive language. Consideration should be given to including these guidelines in relevant process documents, which are maintained in the OVS repository.

The scope of this task does not include updating existing code or documents in the repository to match the guidelines: that can be treated as a follow-up activity.

In forming the guidelines consideration may be given to external sources, such as the following:

• https://github.com/IBM/IBMInclusiveITLanguage  
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_character 
• https://www.splunk.com/en_us/blog/learn/inclusive-language-it.html
• https://www1.udel.edu/itwebdev/help/dei.html
• https://www.it.northwestern.edu/about/it-projects/dei/glossary.html
• https://inclusivenaming.org/