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GitHub, fuck your name change

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Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#311
> We’re going to change the branch name to be more inclusive of minorities

It struck me that GitHub's suggested alternative, "main", could be taken to mean "mainstream", as in not inclusive of minorities. In which case OP's suggested "fuck-github" is by far the more preferable branch name.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#312
post #21
post #4

I feel like this topic has been discussed a lot already, but I think it's important to keep pushing back against useless wasted man-hours like this effort is. I live in a country that was almost entirely enslaved by foreigners for ~700 years. I've discussed this rename with dozens of engineers in my country. Without exception, every single one of them thinks it's completely ridiculous. We need to keep voicing these t…

Same here in germany. When we hear the word master, most people think of the master in karate kid or the master degree of a university. I think only in the usa people are so full of hate that they directly think of bad stuff.

Actually, my first association - as a German - with master is the craftsman title "Meister".

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#313

This name change only gives the satisfaction/feeling of doing something but actually not having any impact (and possibly negative) on the world. As a person of color, the LAST thing I want is attention. Granted I am SEA in Canada, but when someone talks about minorities i just cringe. In my country, my race is the majority and I myself feel bad/awful about my own ra Honestly, if your company is such a moral pillar th…

In sociology, the term "majority" doesn't refer to proportions of a population, rather it refers to classes of people (economic, racial, religious, among others) that hold power in a community. Likewise a minority isn't the smallest demographic in the population, but anyone who doesn't belong to the social majority under discussion. In sociology, these terms have nothing whatsoever to do with the size of the respective populations (which is super annoying and confusing, to be sure). A social minority can actually make up most of the population, while a social majority can be only a few individuals.

For example, Bahrain is 75% Shia Muslim, but the royal family which controls the government and military are Sunni Muslims. Despite making up the majority of the population, Shia Muslims are religious minorities there since they are regularly subject to various forms of discrimination and repression on the basis of their religious beliefs.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/minority

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#314

I fully agree that changing master to main doesn't really solve anything. When supporting people, they should be supported in a way that matters. git itself changing the default branch name to main was a sufficiently good reason for me to go for main as the default branch name for my projects as well. It's a central project and their decision carries weight, regardless of their motivation. If people choose to use mai…

> git itself changing the default branch name to main was a sufficiently good reason for me to go for main as the default branch name for my projects as well. It's a central project and their decision carries weight, regardless of their motivation.

Git hasn’t changed the default. It’s still master. It’s GitHub that changed their default. The only thing Git has done is make it configurable.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#315

I’m a black American and agree with everything that this person in London wrote. It is also a common criticism of the American “left”, and is entirely accurate. For everyone perplexed about black Americans and other people of color walking away from the left, its because you/they don't see us as equals that can be bothered by the exact same things that other Americans can be bothered by: being told what to think, wat…

Perhaps, in the spirit of sharing useful insight within these kinds of discussions, as a black American you could educate me about something? For context, I am neither black nor American, I have little time for woke virtue-signalling and fake outrage, but I do want to be properly respectful of others whose background and sensitivities aren't necessarily like my own. With that in mind, I often find socially acceptable…

It's just symbolic, and still part of a consensus forming continuum based on advances in communication across large landmasses.

Black people in America are from many different cultures and are simply people that noticed that they had a shared experience of being excluded from institutions and even entire states.

The terminology simply comes from individuals taking initiative in the moment and saying "they treat everyone that looks like us all the same and we need umbrella terms to acknowledge our shared circumstance so that its easy to refer to ourselves". Other non-black people already had terms for us and these terms were typically also used in the pejorative. Many people consider "black" to be an affliction even today. So what you have is that some black people reject those older terms, some people try to repurpose and "take back" those older terms, some people create new terms, most terms are still in use.

These aren't scientific terms, but they do permeate into academia to convey a shared concept. So there isn't much to read into it except learning what the consensus is, and the history of why it is. But trying to merge it into the lexicon based on pattern recognition with other words will only confuse you.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#316
I largely agree with the sentiments of the article, but side-effect I like is that it tests assumptions in git systems about "default" branches, and ensures that software isn't too committed to a certain branch name - so that people can call branches whatever they like.

Even on Github people can still use master if they want, it just isn't the default.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#317
This article made me really emotional. I really didnt think anything of "master" branch until Github pointed it out. There are bigger problems to solve and. For starters I hope the tech industry can be more open to people of colour.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#318

This is not a GitHub issue - Git itself now asks you if you would like to use the more inclusive `main`. I personally don't care for these changes, I will likely keep using `master` because I "automatically" type it in my workflow, and I find master to be a lot more descriptive. `main` is the name of my main.c, main.go or main.cpp file, the name of the main function, etc. I dont need another "main" to mess up my auto…

> Git itself now asks you if you would like to use the more inclusive `main`.

No it doesn’t. It says this:

    hint: Using 'master' as the name for the initial branch. This default branch name
    hint: is subject to change. To configure the initial branch name to use in all
    hint: of your new repositories, which will suppress this warning, call:
    hint: 
    hint:  git config --global init.defaultBranch 
    hint: 
    hint: Names commonly chosen instead of 'master' are 'main', 'trunk' and
    hint: 'development'. The just-created branch can be renamed via this command:
    hint: 
    hint:  git branch -m 

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#320
The word "master" (or "slave", really, if I am honest with myself) doesn't mean anything to me.

However I can think of other words which _would_ be very offensive to me, and I would not like to have to use them every day in my job.

Imagine being black and having to type "Negrolist" several times per day. Or being a jew and having to write the word "marrano" (Spanish word which means "pig", but also a despective word used to refer to jews in the past). Or a recovering drug addict having to type "heroin" every day.

My point is that this list of words is probably a little different for everyone, and changes over time. I have heard some people express that "master" and "slave" (and "blacklist") feel that way to them. I have decided to trust that this is a real sentiment shared by a non-insignificant amount of people, even if for this particular black person they do not.

So, if they want to change it to main, sure. It is not a big deal to me, and it can help some people.

I also agree that it is not a big deal for companies like Github, and that the gesture feels empty if not accompanied with a more substantial effort.

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