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

zdnet.com

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

#191

Post by cameronbrown »

tchaffee wrote: post #189
cameronbrown wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are moving the goal posts. A reasonable statement, however I don't consider one paper to be enough evidence for restructuring the entire English language to avoid white/black, light/dark concepts. Not to mention academia is a massive political bubble which is clearly influencing the social sciences right now. We're clearly not going to see eye to eye here - but I wish you a good day.

> restructuring the entire English language That's a strawman. No one is restructuring the entire English language. There is a small list of words used in technology that companies are changing to more accurate words. "denylist" and "allowlist" are clearer in purpose and intent than "blacklist".

[deleted]

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

#192

Post by tchaffee »

cameronbrown wrote: post #191
tchaffee wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> restructuring the entire English language That's a strawman. No one is restructuring the entire English language. There is a small list of words used in technology that companies are changing to more accurate words. "denylist" and "allowlist" are clearer in purpose and intent than "blacklist".

[deleted]

Why does replacing a handful of offensive terms with more accurate words require "restructuring the entire English language"? Unless you can make a case for that, the logical conclusion is that those handful of words will go out of favor and the impact to the "entire English language" will be negligible.

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

#193

Post by cameronbrown »

tchaffee wrote: post #192
cameronbrown wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

Why does replacing a handful of offensive terms with more accurate words require "restructuring the entire English language"? Unless you can make a case for that, the logical conclusion is that those handful of words will go out of favor and the impact to the "entire English language" will be negligible.

[deleted]

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

#194

Post by DanBC »

cameronbrown wrote: post #193
tchaffee wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does replacing a handful of offensive terms with more accurate words require "restructuring the entire English language"? Unless you can make a case for that, the logical conclusion is that those handful of words will go out of favor and the impact to the "entire English language" will be negligible.

[deleted]

> just because America has a racism problem.

> I, and my country, do not share these problems.

Your country definitely has a racism problem. Where do you live? We'll give you a fucking enormous list of both the historic racism and current day racism for that country.

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

#196

Post by anaphor »

I don't think "main" is a good replacement because it loses the notion of it being a branch where the finalized and production ready code goes. It could just as easily mean "where we do all the work" (i.e. trunk based development, which I also dislike the name of), and I think that's potentially confusing to new people even more than "master" (although not as offensive to some people apparently).

If I'm going to rename my default branch, it'll likely be "release" or "final" or something.

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

#197

Post by moosterv »

villasv wrote: post #141

This is such a low impact and harmless change. Even if someone is not to agree with it, why be against it? It's not like a small team inside GitHub is going to deplete the world's activism budget and this will hinder the advance of other definitely more important changes. I'm sure they will find a way to offer minimal impacts, specially because it's just a default value that can be easily configured.

That's my thought as well. I'm willing to change the terms I use if it makes this industry even a little bit more inclusive.

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

#199

Post by tchaffee »

qbaqbaqba wrote: post #186
tchaffee wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sure was convenient that both "black" in English and "niger" in Latin meant "evil" during times of dehumanizing and enslaving others based on the color of their skin. Basic knowledge of the English language also shows us that the word black does have to do with race. It means something for sure to black people. The word black is both a personal identity around race, and it is often used to mean "evil" or "bad" in…

It's really funny how you fail to realize that "slave" comes from "Slav".

I'll add that to my list of reasons for removing master/slave from technical terminology. Thank you.

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

#200

Post by alboy »

mnm1 wrote: post #170
haspoken wrote: post #116

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

It's all fun and games until you realize that the convention of White making the first move is very recent (mid-to-late 19th century) and was invented by white people.
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