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

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

#171
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>in reference to “master” records / the “mastering” process of audio mixing That analogy doesn't really make sense, because audio mastering is more like cutting a release branch. The way git uses it is more equivalent to "trunk" in SVN.

I've always preferred trunk. We branch off a trunk - branching off a master always seemed like a weird mix of analogies.

This is actually a really good idea. I might be using this in the future, just because of its simplicity.

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

#172
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing about those terms are racist. What’s next, renaming the color “black”?

That's actually been done, although it was more a case of someone not putting enough thought into their assignment than actually trying to rename a color. Target once sold a children's desk that was available in white or black. One day, that changed to being available in white or African-American. Target was made fun of for a few days on the internet over that, and presumably some employee learned that when a word ha…

Not all black people, even in America, are African Americans. Which makes the term wrong even for people. This is a whole new level of stupidity, however, on par with say renaming the git master branch.

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

#173
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the etymology of the word “black” is traced back to reconstruction in Proto-Germanic “ blakaz” (“burned”), and proto-indo-European “ , thought to mean "to burn, gleam, shine, flash". And these of course are not based on the idea of “race” (which I think is a more recent idea). But I was talking about the use of the word “black” as a negative thing, such as in “blacklist”. Etymologyonline.com says “Meaning "fier…

> I think this refutes the idea that the metaphorical associations of the word “black” come from associations with race It would be far more accurate to say this refutes the idea that the original metaphorical associations of the word “black” come from associations with race. US history is full of stories where that original meaning was extended to black people themselves. The metaphorical associations have been usef…

I don't mean to suggest that the ideas did not interact at any point. But I think it would be incorrect to say that the metaphorical associations of "black" which are present in things like "blacklist" and such, "come from" things based on the idea of "race".

To talk about what something "comes from" is to talk about its origins, what it originated from.

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

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This tweet seems to have researched otherwise - that master/slave originated from bit keeper: https://twitter.com/tobie/status/1270290278029631489?s=21

It's just somebody's opinion. "Probably" is the word that indicates that.

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

#175

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?

[deleted]

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

#176
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Interestingly, black starts first in go.

Also black and white keys used to be reversed in early keyboards, they changed it to make it easier to see the separation between keys.

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

#178
post #143
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was the quote supposed to be an opinion? My opinion is that if you share someone else's thoughts in place of your own, then it's not your opinion. And Orwell is dead. I can't ask him what he thinks about this. edit for the non-insulting reply: I only flagged the low-effort non-contribution that started this thread and the insult below. Someone else is responsible for the rest. Your other comments, though not very sub…

What a self-righteous person you are.

If you attack another user like this on HN, we will ban you, regardless of how wrong they are or how right you are or how wrong you feel they are or how right you feel you are.

No more of this, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23519070 was already over the line.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#179
post #98
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…

To be 100% honest, when I first read the changes to whitelist/blacklist I thought, "Well, that's pretty stupid" but after reading your comment and a few others, it does actually seem quite racist. Like someone else mentioned, without the racist connotations I wouldn't know whether black or white list was the 'good' one. Language evolves constantly, always has and always will do. I'm not going to get hung up on things…

>without the racist connotations I wouldn't know whether black or white list was the 'good' one.

Please. Humans are diurnal animals, and we depend on sight as our main sense. The idea of light good, dark bad is present in infants. It's likely much older than consciousness.

I'm not denying that there's an unfortunate racist element correlated with it all, with the trend over the past few centuries being pale-skinned people exploiting dark-skinned people, but it's certainly not the root cause of these associations.

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

#180

I know this is going to be a PC war, but, I'm curious how they technically intend to do this. Is "main" just going to be a visual alias on the site? If so that will be really confusing if the branch is still technically called "master" and needs to be referred to that way in the command line. If they intend to actually rename the branches I don't know how they can do that without breaking all sorts of scripts and bui…

Branch names have no meaning on git. "master" is just the default name for the initial branch when you create a repository using "git create".

Github just wants to change it to "main". It won't change existing repositories and you can rename it to anything you want afterwards, including "master".

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