All the time and money that will go into this would be much better spent donating to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund or another organization fighting to solve the real problems.
GitHub is working on renaming default branch from “master”
221–230 of 280 posts
Re: GitHub is working on renaming default branch from “master”
#222As a black person, speaking just for myself, I really do not get the issue around semantics like this. The word "Master" is not synonymous with any race and so does not make me (or anyone I know) uncomfortable. The concept of masters (and slaves) exist and are useful metaphors for naming similar phenomenon. I would much rather focus on issues that make people truly less comfortable in technology, like hiring or spons…
I've always seen it as 'final mix', 'mastered tape', didn't even occur to me before this it could be backpropagated to BLM.
Re: GitHub is working on renaming default branch from “master”
#223Have the owners of the alternatives commented on this yet? What to use now? Atlassian? Gitlab?
Re: GitHub is working on renaming default branch from “master”
#224 companies like github should remain apolitical. this is pure nonesense, merely a show of force by otherwise impotent and misguided liberals. take your outrage somewhere else.
Re: GitHub is working on renaming default branch from “master”
#225As a black person, speaking just for myself, I really do not get the issue around semantics like this. The word "Master" is not synonymous with any race and so does not make me (or anyone I know) uncomfortable. The concept of masters (and slaves) exist and are useful metaphors for naming similar phenomenon. I would much rather focus on issues that make people truly less comfortable in technology, like hiring or spons…
It just seems like an ultimately meaningless gesture. Is erasing the word "master" from the English language going to actually help anyone? What's next - is the lock company Master Lock going to have to change their company name?
What about a small company called Mastercard?
Re: GitHub is working on renaming default branch from “master”
#226Why no one is addressing the biggest problem about programming: separating bits to 0s and 1s. Not only that, but also 0s have no value unless they are led by 1.
This is outrageous!
Re: GitHub is working on renaming default branch from “master”
#227Nobody cares about the black slave auctions going on in Libya RIGHT NOW. But we are going to remove the word master from our software because it offends people whose ancestors were slaves generations ago.
In China they are kicking people out of their homes for being black. But we do bend the knee for them because of money. Selective social justice...
Re: GitHub is working on renaming default branch from “master”
#228This sounds like an April fool or an Onion article...
Maybe they could take this opportunity to do something useful & provide a dark mode...
Re: GitHub is working on renaming default branch from “master”
#229Using the term master doesn't bother me - in my opinion the idea of the master/slave dynamic is much less problematic when you're talking in the context of bits and bytes flicking up and down on some silicon. Having said that, if it bothers people, change it. I do suspect to a certain extent though that people are more interested in changing it because they're worried it might be offensive to other people than actual…
I totally agree with 1. If the shorter word is just as clear, it is better. "M" is not clear but "main" is. And in fact, at work, we use both git and mercurial, and they have slightly different terminologies. In particular, git's "master" is mercurial's "default". The result is that we are sometimes mixing the two. And we naturally ended up calling the master/default branch the "main branch" with the understanding th…
So your decision rule is based solely on the word length if both words are similarly 'clear'? I can see how this rule can backfire in some cases...
Re: GitHub is working on renaming default branch from “master”
#230If it helps normalise the removal of problematic terminology in tech then this feels like a positive thing. Software development has a troubling history of being an overwhelmingly straight, white, male space, ridding ourselves of terminology that causes friction to new developers who don't fit the standard model has got to be a good thing.
I'm certain that most people would see renaming master to main as fairly benign. However. if a company like Github can be open to making a change like this, even if it is purely symbolic, it sends a message that changes to the status quo are possible.
I've also seen some comments complain about the technical difficulty of this change. If this forces developers to put some effort into updating tools that are hardcoded to refer to the primary branch as master then it's good from a purely technical perspective. Especially to help those of us following trunk-based development who already refer it as the trunk.