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Discussion on renaming master branch gets heated, then shut down

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Re: Discussion on renaming master branch gets heated, then shut down

#41
Let me state first of all that I am fully aware of the fact that I do not know what it is like to be the target of (classic) racism. Nor will I deny that there are some things that are just not right.

However, where things go wrong in this discussion is the people who make complaining their profession. Surely you can think of some textbook examples of this. If you as a society conform to these people, the stock is not finished. Then there comes the next problem and the next, and so on and so forth.

Part of the population, often a minority, is very much in favor of this. Another part of the population feels attacked by this and will resist strongly. The rest will be somewhere in between, but what is almost always the case is that these kinds of discussions lead to divisions within society. Division is often accompanied by strong emotions and strong opinions, which in turn leads to hateful behavior against each other. That often expresses itself in racism.

And in principle that is not necessarily an insurmountable problem, provided there is enough interest in change. But there we come back to the point that many professional activists will never be good enough. Of course, it cannot be the case that all aspects of a culture and a country must be fully adapted. Certainly not at the expense of cohesion within society, with all the negative consequences that entails.

What you get now is that everything, irrelevant and unnecessary, that can be classified as politically correct, is allowed. In fact, a critical view of the whole situation is immediately perceived as incorrect and racist. You now have the choice of fully conforming to this politically correct thinking and action, or you may experience serious negative consequences. Then I am talking about dismissal or a completely destroyed reputation. If you are also a white person, the consequences are only greater.

And that is why I talked about classic racism in the beginning of my speech. Racism unfortunately also takes place the other way. A colored person may as well be a racist and a white person may as well be a victim of racism. What is completely ridiculous, however, is that there seem to be many people who believe that racism can exist exclusively with a colored person as its victim.

Anyway, what I mainly want to go to, is that we should take a critical look at abuses within our society, but certainly not lose sight of reality. We need to live together more and better and not just get further away from each other. That also means that you sometimes have to be able to say: "now it is enough", "this is going too far". And that you will not then be called Hitler.

If you tell your partner you love him or her every 10 minutes, it will lose value. It is no different in this matter.

And let's not forget that there is always someone who can take offense somewhere. Should we just adjust everything? (Of course people take offense again ...)

Note though that colored people are (much) more often victims of racism. Racism doesn't necessarily have to be words to someone.

I treat people the way they treat me. If I don't know them, I treat them the way I want to be treated. I have never (consciously) been guilty of racism.

What I take offense is that I cannot safely express my, quite subtle and nuanced, opinion on this topic. Not because my opinion is so radical, but because it is apparently not allowed to apply nuance at all and it only consists of right or wrong.

The fact that I am white also means that I can afford less in this discussion. And I experience that as discrimination and racism.

Re: Discussion on renaming master branch gets heated, then shut down

#42
post #22

Whilst in theory, I'm neutral to the change on ethical grounds, I think in practice it will make things very confusing. Master/Slave is such an established pair of terms in tech that they have a loaded meaning as soon as you see them. If I see 'Master' and 'Slave' on an old hard disk, I know what that is. If I see "Configure one device to the master setting and the rest to slave.", I get a understanding of the relati…

Right. And the fact that you don't find those terms offensive is part of your privilege. You're being invited to step outside of yourself and consider that for some people, it's not as clear-cut / apolitical as it is for you.

Maybe it is offending people, maybe it isn't. I hold no doubt that the concept or slavery is offensive, but I haven't actually seen an argument from a PoC saying that it offends them. Nobody alive today was a slave during the time that it was legal in USA/UK, etc. I'd hold a very different view if we were having this discussion in the 1800s. As I said, I haven't actually seen any significant outcry about this from the relevant communities, for lack of a better term.

My argument goes more along the lines that changing something like this can cause more harm than good in some cases, given that we have years of established documents using these definitions.

As an example from science, the reason that the direction of conventional current goes opposite to the flow of electrons is because we found out new information, but decided it was too costly to change.

If we remove the Master/Slave terminology from everything new effective today, then in 20 years, will a new developer know that 'Main/Secondary' in their 2021 datasheet is referring to the same thing as 'Master/Slave' from their 1991 datasheet?

Possibly, but also maybe not. A smart person could infer this and another could search it, but there is still potential for confusion.

Re: Discussion on renaming master branch gets heated, then shut down

#43
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a ton of software that assumes the main branch is labeled master.

That software is broken if it doesn't allow you to configure this (just as git does).

There's a lot of 'broken' software that assumed any Windows version number with a 9 in it was made in the 90s. That doesn't mean that we can (nor should) throw out that software.

Re: Discussion on renaming master branch gets heated, then shut down

#44

I think that there is no need to change these things. If you make a new version control system, then you can use whichever name you think is best (presumably whichever one is most descriptive, but not too long), but we need not change existing ones, nor change projects using them to use different names. I personally don't use git, but the naming of the default branch has nothing to do with it. I use Fossil, which use…

> I use Fossil, which uses "trunk" as the name for the default branch. I don't know what reason they chose this, but I don't really care much

The "default branch" of a tree is a trunk, from which branches emerge.

Re: Discussion on renaming master branch gets heated, then shut down

#45

> I had actually started with "default", and was told it might be triggering for folks in financial trouble? So now 'default' is out too ? This is absurd.

What was wrong with 'main'?

It's a very overloaded term. if someone says `master` I know they're talking about the git branch. If they say `main`, they could be talking about `main.c`, the `main()` function, or just using the regular English word 'main' as an adjective. `master` is very unambiguous due to not otherwise being a commonly used word in software. `trunk` or `mainline` would be better names than `main` for that reason (though mainline sometimes refers to specific people's master branches as with Linux, so that would unfortunately be colliding with that).

Re: Discussion on renaming master branch gets heated, then shut down

#46

> I had actually started with "default", and was told it might be triggering for folks in financial trouble? So now 'default' is out too ? This is absurd.

Trunk is out too, since people hunt elephants.

true, but elephants dont speak English.

Re: Discussion on renaming master branch gets heated, then shut down

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. And the fact that you don't find those terms offensive is part of your privilege. You're being invited to step outside of yourself and consider that for some people, it's not as clear-cut / apolitical as it is for you.

Every non-white person I've seen commenting on this change has expressed they couldn't care less and do not give a second thought to these naming conventions. Maybe we should let their voices be heard rather than continue to try to speak for them?

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence; my experience differs from yours.

Re: Discussion on renaming master branch gets heated, then shut down

#48
post #4
post #3

School master? Head master?

They don’t use those terms anymore as I discovered when talking to a great friend who is very decorated by the establishment for being a “Head Teacher”.

I honestly can see middle schoolers snickering at the fact that their school's authority figure is seriously and officially referred to as "head" teacher.

Re: Discussion on renaming master branch gets heated, then shut down

#49
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right that I do not know the history. It might not be historically true but I would argue that's irrelevant to the conversation. (even as non relevant the conversation is to begin with!) Current perception is what matters. Beyond that, seems like if it actually did refer to a master/slave architecture, it seems like there would be more reason to keep it describing what it is. Maybe the term invokes some violen…

I used to use 'master' and 'read-slave' database nodes. I'm happier with 'writer' and 'read-replica'. I would say this is definitely in context.

Yeah. "Slave" doesn't really make sense for read replica. What would be a better term for a build master with worker nodes?

Re: Discussion on renaming master branch gets heated, then shut down

#50
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to use 'master' and 'read-slave' database nodes. I'm happier with 'writer' and 'read-replica'. I would say this is definitely in context.

Yeah. "Slave" doesn't really make sense for read replica. What would be a better term for a build master with worker nodes?

Build coordinator and build workers, or even build manager and build workers.
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