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GitHub, fuck your name change

mooseyanon.medium.com

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Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#211

Post by pjc50 »

Basically I agree with tda's post: this does nothing to address the real problem, and allows people to feel they've done something when they haven't.

On the other hand, it's not a big deal to do it and we've done it.

If you're bothered by the demands for empty gestures, how about addressing the root cause: the rising tide of racism, especially official and policy racism, and the tragic outcomes it produces.

(We're having another round of the policing discussion in the UK, since within the same week we've had a woman murdered by an off-duty police officer, a vigil for that woman broken up by the police on the pretext of COVID restrictions, and a law proposed that makes it illegal for protests to be "annoying".)

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#212

Post by nsonha »

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…

> 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

A lazy and overused argument. No one said only one thing can be done. Fact is time and attention are resources and by doing some thing you allocate less of them to other things.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#213

Post by yosamino »

turbonoobie wrote: post #124
kkoncevicius wrote: post #10

> Last summer an(other) unarmed black man was killed by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota. [...] So, what was tech’s big song and dance? Let’s remove offensive terminology from our collective lexicon. There were several casualties, white/blacklist are examples of words deemed to be too offensive to use. In my memory this started way before the recent BLM protests - around the time CoC (Code of Conduct) was being intro…

CoC is such a strange document. All I’ve seen it do is sit in a repo as a flag post. When I see a license document it gets me thinking about what intentions the project is released with, but when I see a CoC document all I do is mentally filter it out and go about my day.. One would think it could leave some sense about the maintainer(s) being decent in some way. Instead I’m just left with a feeling of coercion if an…

Reading CoCs they are usually full of language that you would expect people would have already learned in Kindergarden. Unfortunately there are too many grown-ups around that seem to not have internalized these things, so while I don't like the patronizing myself, I see some value in writing down a set of "if you wanna collaborate here, please respect these rules".

And while you are right, the code itself doesn't care, there are lot's of interactions around producing that code that are between humans, where behaviour is important.

It's not much different from the guidelines that exist for this very site: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I mean, that is a kind of code of condcut, too.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#214

Post by cuddlecake »

> They forgot to talk to people who are actually members of the black community.

Afaik, modern slaves are mostly Asian (women).

Whatever, I prefer the name "main" over "master", and moreso I prefer "trunk". Often, branch names like "develop" are used as well.

What this change helped produce was mostly that tools do not rely on `master` being the default branch, which is very helpful in some regards.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#215

Post by HerbsMan »

I'm waiting for the moment when they change all "black" to "dark" or something equally stupid.

BTW. "Black Lives Matter" is totally wrong - It should be "All Lives Matter", otherwise it is kinda racist, no? ;- )

BTW2. By avoiding terminology "Master", "Slave" etc, what we trying to achieve? hide the truth that White managed to catch and enslave Black and roll on like that for years? cmon.

We are living in times of hypocrisy.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#216

Post by cheschire »

mosselman wrote: post #162
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.

Oh I absolutely did. No reason for me to repeat the entire article in my own response to it, so I referenced newspeak instead.

The map is not the territory, and you may simply be noticing the differences between your map and mine.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#217

Post by chaboud »

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…

There is a chasm between “doing something like this distracts from more effective options for change” and “people can only do one thing at a time”, and arguing the latter when someone says the former feels disingenuous.

For example, in California, due to long term drought, urban water usage legislation was enacted. Urban water usage in California accounts for less than 10% of the state’s total usage, so a 20% reduction, at significant personal impact to urban residents, has a sub 2% impact on total use. However, it also gives the appearance that the legislature is actively engaged in addressing the problem of water conservation to under-informed voters without compelling those legislators to address agricultural and manufacturing uses (and their organized lobbying efforts).

The problem with “every little bit helps” mentalities is that they enable perverse outcomes when coupled with limited information decision making, finite resources, and multiple concerns to balance. All of this leads to the politically optimal (and thus career sustaining) option set being deeply suboptimal application of resources.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#218

Post by ZephyrBlu »

realfinec wrote: post #189
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…

Lol, as another black guy, even before opening the thread I knew I'd find one of these grovelling comments from a house-type here. I, at least, completely support GitHub's actions. Btw, we're not "walking away from the Left", as is indicated in the recent election results. You might be confusing your own people for Hispanics.

> grovelling comments from a house-type here

?!?

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#220

Post by XorNot »

benrbray wrote: post #126
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…

In all fairness, this sort of silly business is more representative of the "Twitter left", comprised of cogs in a perpetual rage-inducing machine, than it is of "leftists" whose main objective is to address the limitations of capitalism, at varying degrees of willingness to work within the system vs burn it down. Of course, our media is run by billionaires so they capitalize on the identity politics to divide everyon…

This is some technocrat fiction that has failed time and time again. There are towns in the US right now which actively reject help if it's not coming in the form of "more coal jobs" (which aren't coming back regardless of how much coal mining is actually on).

Economic incentives don't change people's minds, they motivate them to double-down on their biases.

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