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GitHub wil change default branch name from 'master' to 'main'

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Re: GitHub wil change default branch name from 'master' to 'main'

#51

Post by adjkant »

bonzini wrote: post #49
adjkant wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All three are used as a noun to me, FWIW. When you say "merge to master", master is a noun. My point above is that it's more uncommon in my experience to fully say "master branch". "Masters degrees" as far as I linguistically understand means "mastery of subject", which is indeed the same language, though perhaps closer to feudal master/subject, which was more ethnic slavery in Europe than the specific iteration in t…

In "Merge to master", "master" is a proper noun, the name that was given to the branch because it is "the master branch" (adjective); just like St. Paul took his name from the adjective "paulus", meaning small. Otherwise, it would be "merge to the master" which I have never heard. It's not a costless change; all documentation would be split between that for "master" and that for "main". The cynic in me sees Embrace,…

A proper noun is a noun...?

> Embrace, Extend, Extinguish

How did we get from "change one word, find/replace basically" to an entire predatory policy by Microsoft?

If anything, this proves that it is possible over time. The issue with EEE was not the change itself but the power Microsoft gained by enforcing examples itself. Where's the power issue in making a change that is a positive for the world without negatives once past the transitional issue?

Again, my point here is that this just feel like people put more energy into fighting it than the change costs, and I think often that speaks more to people marginalizing the underlying issue than caring about the problems with the change itself.

Re: GitHub wil change default branch name from 'master' to 'main'

#52

Post by dingaling »

adjkant wrote: post #37
loceng wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me when people are so angered that they can't separate contexts of language use, it's a signal or canary that things are out of control. And then reasonable people fold to requested or demanded change, like giving into a child rewarding them for something not reasonable, re-enforcing the illogical thought behaviour - doing it because it's easier to make satisfy a few angry, unreasonable people (perhaps a mob) who…

Why do you assume this is driven by anger and that the worries here are "coddling" and a "weaker society"? Why can't this simply be "hey, that term has some serious historical baggage and it doesn't sit right with some people, why not change it? As a white person, the term "slave" in distributed systems always made me feel that way. Not as much for master and whitelist/blacklist personally, but I see no harm in trans…

Can you avoid using the term 'triggering' please, it has connotations of shooting people.

See how deep this rabbit hole goes...

Re: GitHub wil change default branch name from 'master' to 'main'

#53

Post by adjkant »

dingaling wrote: post #52
adjkant wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you assume this is driven by anger and that the worries here are "coddling" and a "weaker society"? Why can't this simply be "hey, that term has some serious historical baggage and it doesn't sit right with some people, why not change it? As a white person, the term "slave" in distributed systems always made me feel that way. Not as much for master and whitelist/blacklist personally, but I see no harm in trans…

Can you avoid using the term 'triggering' please, it has connotations of shooting people. See how deep this rabbit hole goes...

Linguistic meaning changes all the time without the world burning down, so I'm really curious what danger you think there is in this "rabbit hole". Or do you also oppose using "awful" to be a negative, because if we accept that, how far does the rabbit hole go?

Look at how many words we use without these types of issues too! If you're worried about keeping up with a few intentional linguistic changes a year among many other natural ones, I'd be more concerned elsewhere.

Re: GitHub wil change default branch name from 'master' to 'main'

#54

Post by sebazzz »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #9

I feel like this will break a very significant amount of tooling

Why? You were always free to delete or rename the master branch. There are enough repositories which don't have a master branch.

Unlike SVN (trunk), in git "master" really has no value to the VCS.

I also assume this will be for new repositories, so Github won't break builds by changing existing repositories - because that would indeed mess up a lot.

Re: GitHub wil change default branch name from 'master' to 'main'

#55

Post by bonzini »

adjkant wrote: post #51
bonzini wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In "Merge to master", "master" is a proper noun, the name that was given to the branch because it is "the master branch" (adjective); just like St. Paul took his name from the adjective "paulus", meaning small. Otherwise, it would be "merge to the master" which I have never heard. It's not a costless change; all documentation would be split between that for "master" and that for "main". The cynic in me sees Embrace,…

A proper noun is a noun...? > Embrace, Extend, Extinguish How did we get from "change one word, find/replace basically" to an entire predatory policy by Microsoft? If anything, this proves that it is possible over time. The issue with EEE was not the change itself but the power Microsoft gained by enforcing examples itself. Where's the power issue in making a change that is a positive for the world without negatives…

Everything that you name gets a proper noun.

If you name your git branch "maint", that proper noun comes from the common noun "maintenance".

If you name your git branch "master", that proper noun comes from the adjective "master".

> The issue with EEE was not the change itself but the power Microsoft gained by enforcing examples itself

Exactly, making things different is effectively a potential lock-in issue for GitHub vs. other git hosts.

Re: GitHub wil change default branch name from 'master' to 'main'

#56

Post by filoeleven »

I’d like to see the Venn diagram of (people who are complaining about renaming ‘master’ to ‘main’) and (people who complain about misspelling ‘lose’ as ‘loose’, “it’s” as “its”, etc).

I don’t have a fully-formed idea of what I’m getting at yet, but I suspect that the overlap is high, and it seems inconsistent. Like for “master”, especially when coupled with “slave”, the expectation is that the context of its usage in computing makes it clear that this has nothing to do with humans claiming to own other humans. But use “loose” where “lose” is the right word, and you’re gonna get a snide or “helpful” response about the misspelling, even though the context makes it perfectly clear what the intended meaning was in the vast majority of cases.

Re: GitHub wil change default branch name from 'master' to 'main'

#57

Post by adjkant »

bonzini wrote: post #55
adjkant wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A proper noun is a noun...? > Embrace, Extend, Extinguish How did we get from "change one word, find/replace basically" to an entire predatory policy by Microsoft? If anything, this proves that it is possible over time. The issue with EEE was not the change itself but the power Microsoft gained by enforcing examples itself. Where's the power issue in making a change that is a positive for the world without negatives…

Everything that you name gets a proper noun. If you name your git branch "maint", that proper noun comes from the common noun "maintenance". If you name your git branch "master", that proper noun comes from the adjective "master". > The issue with EEE was not the change itself but the power Microsoft gained by enforcing examples itself Exactly, making things different is effectively a potential lock-in issue for GitH…

And this changes what exactly? Its derivation doesn't change its use as a noun in the common use.

Even if it was an adjective, you act as if that magically excludes it from being associated with the master/slave distributed systems reference, but it's still a CS term at the end of the day and I fail to see how there would not be a subconscious association there.

> Exactly, making things different is effectively a potential lock-in issue for GitHub vs. other git hosts.

Or all the others can change too for the low cost of near zero, at the same time. If those companies don't want to change for the societal good, maybe that's a legitimate reason not to use them. Do you really believe a single rename in the name of societal good that anyone can do with low cost is going to cause vendor lock-in?

Re: GitHub wil change default branch name from 'master' to 'main'

#59

Post by filoeleven »

bonzini wrote: post #8

If you read "master branch" and think of slavery, you have reading comprehension issues that won't be fixed by renaming the branch. (I know bitkeeper used master/slave terminology for repositories; that is completely irrelevant to git).

So your gripe is that people loose the context when its obvious what is meant, yeah?

Re: GitHub wil change default branch name from 'master' to 'main'

#60

Post by k__ »

holler wrote: post #28
k__ wrote: post #7

Awesome. Let's do this industry wide and never talk about it again.

better yet, why don't we just strike the word "master" from the English language, that way no mortal will make the mistake ever again?

I think, context is the point here.

It's like with content that is needlessly sexualized. We should keep stuff like that to the context it belongs.

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