Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GitHub, fuck your name change

mooseyanon.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 1001 posts

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#161

Post by freddie_mercury »

gebruikersnaam wrote: post #20
lcrz wrote: post #9

I just want to add a link to this[0] post here as a counterpoint for why changing language _can_ matter. The author seems to imply that the name change is all about being non-offensive to some people. Since the author doesn't find the language offensive, they conclude that name change is only political correctness or virtue signalling and a hollow gesture. I do not agree with that. Language and words are very powerfu…

> Since the author doesn't find the language offensive You're missing the point, the author concludes that the companies decide that the language is offensive without asking the people who are supposedly the offended party.

No, he's complaining that they didn't ask him specifically. It really easy to find black developers who were consulted and agree with the change.

Here we go (this took under 5 seconds for me to Google)

https://dev.to/afrodevgirl/replacing-master-with-main-in-git...

Now there's duelling anecdata and the OP provides no suggestions on how to reconcile them.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#162

Post by mosselman »

cheschire wrote: post #16

Eliminating the usage of words with offensive connotations from the English language is double plus good. edit: Downvotes and the wording of some responses make me concerned that some folks may be unaware of the reference. Doubleplusgood is a newspeak word used in the book 1984. Newspeak is a language that is used to eliminate the ability for people to express unapproved thoughts because there are no words with which…

The argument of the author is that he feels like tech is ONLY doing the name changes and is congratulating themselves about being inclusive afterwards.

I agree with this observation. For reasons that the author has articulated far better than I would in this comment, so please read the whole thing.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#163

Post by 29athrowaway »

Github does business with ICE and CBP.

What does ICE and CBP do? Perhaps you've seen CBP at a port of entry when you enter the US. But that's only part of what they have been doing.

Visit this link, and skip to 01:23:03 to hear Elora Mukherjee's testimony of what CBP has really been doing in their detention facilities.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?462505-1/house-hearing-migrant... (video)

https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO00/20190712/109772/HHRG... (transcript)

Maybe you heard some of this on TV in 2019. But what was communicated then was a very watered down version of what actually happened.

You could say those children are detainees, but even detainees have dignity. Some of those detainees were newborns. What does a newborn know about immigration? laws? countries? You have to be a real idiot or a racist to take it against them.

And meanwhile, Github gladly offered their services to help CBP and ICE to operate.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#164

Post by yosamino »

dsun180 wrote: post #21
sunaurus wrote: 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.

Germany is a really bad example though. The German way is to pretend racism just doesn't exist - today is the aniversary of a racist, arson attack that happened in 1994 killing 7 people (one of them pregnant) where the official line is still "the guy was just crazy what can you do ?!".

If you want to transplant the "master"-example, look at all the discussions of how they name certain sauces,schnitzels and deserts as well as a weird insistance that offensively named streets, underground-stations and (for some reason) pharmacies "must not need to be renamed, why would you even be offended".

Germany is not the example to go with concerning offensive language.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#165

Post by Brian_K_White »

INTPenis wrote: post #93
qwerty456127 wrote: post #11

I would agree "slave" seems a weird choice of a word but I can see nothing wrong in "master". Not a single moment in my life I thought about slavery when hearing/seeing the word "master". Should we also rename master degrees perhaps?

Same here, until this debate surfaced I never thought about slavery when I saw these terms. What made me think more about slavery was the materials that go into computers like cobalt and sulfur. Someone has to go down into the sulfur mine and get that for us. That's an actual master/slave relationship that is going on right now to power all our fantastic infrastructure. But so much industry has depended on sulfur for…

And now I am imagining some video where they go down into sulfur mine and tell one of the miners "We bring great news for you! Github changed the default name of master code branches to something else! Gitlab too! It was kind of a little bit annoying a little but they're doing it anyway!"

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#166

Post by motogpjimbo »

dsincl12 wrote: post #110
vmception wrote: post #47

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…

As a white dude, I feel really ashamed for this even though I'm not involved in this at all. Sorry man, you deserve a better world.

Isn't this the exact sentiment that is causing the issues in the first place?

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#167

Post by benrbray »

sennight wrote: post #41

...and nobody in the valley seems to be aware of the etymology for "slave" :)

For the lazy, here [1,2] are some wiktionary links. Assuming these are correct, wow, this makes the whole main vs master thing seem even more silly.

> SLAVE: From Middle English, from Old French sclave, from Medieval Latin sclāvus (“slave”), from Late Latin Sclāvus (“Slav”), because Slavs were often forced into slavery in the Middle Ages.[1][2][3][4][5] The Latin word is from Byzantine Greek Σκλάβος (Sklábos), see that entry and Slav for more.

> ROBOT: Borrowed from Czech robot, from robota (“drudgery, servitude”). Coined in the 1921 science-fiction play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) by Karel Čapek after having been suggested to him by his brother Josef, and taken into English without change.

[1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/slave#Etymology [2]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/robot#Etymology

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#168

Post by vesinisa »

I know the topic is explosive, but I see a pattern here that is being repeated over and over again: people thinking they know for better what is good for some minority, and then making a big fuss about it. At no point does anyone think to ask people in the said minority if they think this is actually a good idea and what they want.

Another similar(?) example. In my country, there is a growing immigrant Muslim minority. Recently, there was an extremely rare case of the anti-immigration right wing party and the liberal green party rallying behind a unified cause: criminalizing male circumcision. The anti-immigration folk will of course get on any bandwagon that marginalizes the immigrant minorities.

But I also talked to some of the liberals who supported the initiative. They support it because they view circumcision as torture, mutilation and a violation of the child's rights. One even described circumcised males are "handicapped". I got the impression that many of these supposedly "liberal" people have never actually discussed circumcision with a person who is circumcised. Nevertheless, they seem eager to ban the entire practice and further marginalize an entire section of the population.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#169

Post by twic »

zimpenfish wrote: post #134
tda wrote: post #12

Though I initially sympathized with the name change from master to main (cause I don't care what it is called), I am now more of the opinion that this kind of window-dressing might actually be harmful as it distracts from addressing the root cause. It is a bit complicated as the name change in itself is not bad, but given the context, and that it distracts from addressing real issues it actually is. Same thing with p…

> as it distracts from addressing the root cause. This would imply that people are capable only of doing one thing at a time and, potentially, that they're only capable of doing one thing full stop. I would honestly be amazed if a single person, anywhere[1], looked at this change and thought "yep, I don't have to think about slavery now". > think of themselves as somewhat environmentally responsible. Well, I guess th…

> If we can do both, why do we never do both?

https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/perhaps-we-cannot-do-bo...

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#170

Post by ThePhysicist »

Does master not also designate a person that has achieved mastery in a given craft or art, like a "Kung Fu master"? Within git I think the term is used in the meaning of a "master copy" in the sense of a reference. I also think this change is pointless, and it will break so so many things.
Post reply on HN