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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

#161

Post by lallysingh »

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #69
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...

> Without the racist background, how does one know which list does which? By basic knowledge of the English language. Terms like "black market", "black death", "black tuesday", etc. etc. By the expressions like "looking at things in black and white". It is a part of language, it has nothing to do with race. These colors are used in the same way in other languages of other countries that don't even have racial slavery…

The point was that a song that racist was played quite openly for decades, to children. I still hear it on ice cream trucks.

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

#162

Post by hintymad »

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...

Actually, you're a racist to the bone because everything you see is "very very deep" racism. You turn everyday words into labels that divide people. You just can't see that etymology of a word can have nothing to do with race. You probably can't see that the pain of our black brothers and sisters may, just may, also have come from poverty, prejudice, or in general just class struggles.

You're real racist because you automatically label people from different cultural background as racist, without considering if they have racial bias. Italian has Mano Nera, Japanese has 黒幕, multiple languages have "black market", Chinese has 黑心，黑社会. Are they all racists? Are they all guilty of slavery of African Americans? If you're not a racist, then you're nothing more than a Jacobin to the bone. When are you going to call for Guillotine on people who disagree with you?

Shame on you.

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

#163

Post by danharaj »

cameronbrown wrote: post #156
danharaj wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slavery is still practiced in the United States.

Where?

> Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

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

#164

Post by jb0x168 »

idiocratic wrote: post #133

I'm a very anti-racist and anti-fascist person. I'm in favour of removing slavers and white supremacists statues. But these silly debates in the tech world makes me cringe a little and I wish our community was different. Isn't it of little importance how a branch is named? Let's focus on politics, on inclusion, on essential debates that our societies need to improve and let's not waste our energies changing stupid li…

Just curious: are you also a member of one of the groups impacted by these terms?

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

#165

Post by mnm1 »

It seems to me that black people are asking to not be killed for no reason, to not be treated like second class citizens, to have equal rights not just in law but it reality. In the meantime, white people respond by changing the master branch name. Yeah, they got the message alright. This is going to make black lives matter. Changing words completely unrelated to the oppression of black people is somehow going to help. Or this is just a PR move like most responses, designed to placate and pretend to support the cause without actually doing so.

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

#166

Post by jb0x168 »

jancsika wrote: post #84

I'm surprised it wasn't called "main" given it was all C wizards who developed git in the first place.

"Trunk" fits the branching metaphor better, but I think "main" will be easier to uptake (autocomplete, muscle memory, etc).

I feel the same way about "denylist" versus "blocklist". "Denylist" is more precise, but I think "blocklist" would make for an easier transition.

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

#168

Post by jb0x168 »

anjc wrote: post #45

I don't understand the racist connotations given that there are no "slave" branches. Every similar mention of "master" can't change. What words can better describe a master boot record, for example?

Primary? Initial? Root? (ok maybe not the last one, though the internal rhyme is nice).

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

#169

Post by finnthehuman »

weeboid wrote: post #101
exabrial wrote: post #59

We could have a bunch of reform: from reducing the police force size and budget, to removing pointless offenses ("no victim no crime"), to reduce interaction with police, to eliminating all government programs so to eliminate financial dependency on the government (create a toehold for systemic racism)... Yet, we're renaming git master to git main. The profound and widespread impact of this will surely sweep the nati…

Even incremental progress is progress. And sometimes, incremental progress can happen at such an obtuse angle that it becomes completely unmergeable back to `main`. But you can always point to the spirit of the branch.

>Even incremental progress is progress.

Is this progress, or the appearance of progress (aka masturbation)?

This is Microsoft, a trillion dollar company that continuously lobbies the government on issues much less important to society than systemic inequality. They've decided the proper corporate action in the wake of new civil unrest over racism is to change a variable name in an esoteric professional tool. A tool used almost exclusively by people smart enough to recognize the lack of active malice in the current name.

The proper response to Microsoft by anyone who cares about racism should be to recognize the insult to their intelligence.

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

#170

Post by mnm1 »

haspoken wrote: post #116
rosstex wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some etymology: blacklist (n.) also black-list, "list of persons who have incurred suspicion, earned punishment, or are for any reason deemed objectionable by the makers and users of the list," 1610s, from black (adj.), here indicative of disgrace, censure, punishment (a sense attested from 1590s, in black book) + list (n.1). Specifically of employers' list of workers considered troublesome (usually for union activit…

Are these racially derived, or just the idea of opposing forces or other connotations of white and black? Games such as Go, Chaturanga, Chess, Reversi commonly use black vs white pieces and are depicted as such in early illustrations. I think that there are other reasons for black vs white than race. I did find the article "The light and dark of language" that touches on this. ( https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/200…

Obviously the black side will have to start first in chess now. Reparations.

We can also swap the black and white keys on all pianos. So many things to do to fight racism. /s

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