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GitHub to replace “master” with alternative term to avoid slavery references

zdnet.com

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Re: GitHub to replace “master” with alternative term to avoid slavery references

#41

Post by waheoo »

dingle3 wrote: post #27
lallysingh wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without the racist background, how does one know which list does which? The new names actually describe what they do. The reason it may seem ridiculous is that racism is very, very deep in American culture. The country's culture goes back hundreds of years and is still slowly working on being less so. Here's an example: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/05/11/310708342...

what's the racist background?

Black people = bad, white people = good.

Rosstex posted a good explain below.

Re: GitHub to replace “master” with alternative term to avoid slavery references

#42

Post by jrockway »

ColanR wrote: post #14
thefounder wrote: post #2

I guess now the whole master/slave tech should be renamed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master/slave_(technology)

I remember as a kid running into that terminology for the first time, as it related to HDDs connected to a motherboard. Didn't like it at first, still strikes me the wrong way, but does seem like the best terminology for the paradigm.

primary/secondary and leader/follower make just as much sense, and avoid any discomfort.

For IDE, not that it's around anymore, primary/secondary works perfectly. For electing something to control your distributed system "leader election" makes just as much sense as "master election". For git, "main" is 2 letters shorter than "master", and makes sense.

All in all, this is good thing.

Re: GitHub to replace “master” with alternative term to avoid slavery references

#43

Post by drdeca »

lallysingh wrote: post #12
mirthflat83 wrote: post #3

> but also terms like "blacklist" and "whitelist" for "allow list" and "deny/exclude list." Seriously?

Without the racist background, how does one know which list does which? The new names actually describe what they do. The reason it may seem ridiculous is that racism is very, very deep in American culture. The country's culture goes back hundreds of years and is still slowly working on being less so. Here's an example: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/05/11/310708342...

I could be wrong, but I don’t think either term has the etymology tracing back to referring to a person’s race.

Re: GitHub to replace “master” with alternative term to avoid slavery references

#44

Post by quicklime »

thefounder wrote: post #2

I guess now the whole master/slave tech should be renamed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master/slave_(technology)

I'm a little confused about why GitHub is doing this. The master/slave thing I get - there's a direct link to actual slavery there, and it can be replaced with terms like leader/follower or primary/replica fairly easily.

But the "master" branch in Git doesn't have a slave branch. It's a master from which copies are made (as in a "master recording"), which is a different sense of the word.

Re: GitHub to replace “master” with alternative term to avoid slavery references

#49

Post by whb07 »

OneGuy123 wrote: post #21

As if blacks were the only people who were slaves. You think white people were never slaves? Jews? Arabs? Chinese?

Indentured servants, serfs like those from Russia etc. The only society/culture to put an end to slavery has been the Western ideals.

Re: GitHub to replace “master” with alternative term to avoid slavery references

#50

Post by gregoriol »

anjc wrote: post #23
zinclozenge wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allow/deny listing makes a lot more sense to me than white/black listing

Why does it make more sense? Blacklist is used also as a verb, and I don't think "denylist" could be used as such. You could say "add to the denylist" but I don't think this is sensible.

Why wouldn't "to denylist" be as good as "to blacklist"? It's only because we are used to the second one that the first one seems strange, but after some time it will seem as normal to use it
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