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Update to Git changes the default of init.defaultBranch to main

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Re: Update to Git changes the default of init.defaultBranch to main

#221

Post by faebi »

biryani_chicken wrote: post #198
tachyonbeam wrote: post #3

If I say "you are the master of your own destiny", is that offensive, because the word "master" is always offensive? I think that "main branch" sounds fine, it makes as much sense as "master branch", but I'm irked that people are always caving to word policing. Like, we're just going to scratch a whole bunch of words from the dictionary because someone somewhere is offended? The other day, people at my workplace were…

Like I heard someone say, Julius Cesar was a bad guy, but we probably don't wanna change the name of the month of July.

It‘s a matter of time. What‘s stopping somebody? Nothing, you can use all the same arguments.

Re: Update to Git changes the default of init.defaultBranch to main

#222

Post by kemayo »

warmwaffles wrote: post #194
aaomidi wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I'm also for abolishment of police. Police in basically everywhere of the world was made by the ruling class to keep people in order. This matter is even worse in the US that a LOT of police departments were literally made after the emancipation proclamation (or somewhat before), to capture runaway slaves. This is the history of policing in the US. I think what it generally comes down to is a LOT of Americans…

> This matter is even worse in the US that a LOT of police departments were literally made after the emancipation proclamation (or somewhat before), to capture runaway slaves. This is going to need a citation. Cursory searching leads me to Sheriffs being elected in the early 1800s in Ohio. Ohio was also a free state in 1803 when it joined the Union.

Near as I can tell, it's reasonable to say that there were organized groups of state-empowered people in the slave states back as early as the 1700s, whose job was to hunt down escaped slaves. There were also some similar groups across slave and free states who were empowered in part to guard against / control Native Americans.

These early slave patrols / night watches then fairly organically became the "police department" when that concept became widespread in the mid-1800s. I don't think it looks like said spread is really linked to emancipation, but rather (as with the creation of Peel's Metropolitan Police in London in 1829) in response to increasing urbanization / industrialization. Given that the industrial revolution also fairly-strongly caused the US civil war and thus emancipation, we could say it's more a parallel trend than the implied causation.

The cities going "well, we have a somewhat organized group of people whose job is to enforce some laws... why don't we wedge them into this new trend and have them enforce more laws?" gets us that link.

This summary seems reasonable, though I feel it elides the Peelite influence: https://law.jrank.org/pages/1640/Police-History-Early-polici...

Re: Update to Git changes the default of init.defaultBranch to main

#223

Post by nicbou »

tachyonbeam wrote: post #114
pseudalopex wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Changing a default isn't banning a word. The conference was called NIPS. It's slang for nipples and a racial slur. It isn't like everyone was mature about it. There was an unofficial event called TITS. People wore shirts proclaiming "my NIPS are NP hard". Funny but hardly professional.

> Changing a default isn't banning a word. Yes it is. This change is effectively reflecting a push, by bullies, to ban the word master, to eliminate it from spoken and written language, that's exactly what's happening.

What bullying was done?

Re: Update to Git changes the default of init.defaultBranch to main

#224

Post by nicbou »

lnenad wrote: post #150
dspillett wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "blacklist" That has already happened in some places, though blacklist/whitelist are still the most common naming convention for that sort of thing. Blocklist is actually a better name IMO, and I've seen it used in places, and an easy enough change. I don't have any examples I remember of what people might use instead of whitelist though, allowlist doesn't particularly trip of the tongue IMO. Grandfathering is anot…

> Blocklist IMHO it's definitely not. What I do with my blacklist might have nothing to do with blocking anything.

It doesn't have anything with the color black either.

What about "yeslist" and "nolist"? "Includelist" and "excludelist"?

Re: Update to Git changes the default of init.defaultBranch to main

#225

Post by nicbou »

nromiun wrote: post #48

I don't really mind this change. But selective outrage like this is really strange. Some people on Twitter decide a word is offensive and the next day I am just expected to just stop using them. It's hard enough to learn English without these new laws all the time. I don't think this happens to any other language.

It's nothing new. I'm in my late twenties, and I can name a few words we stopped using in my lifetime.

Re: Update to Git changes the default of init.defaultBranch to main

#226

Post by josefx »

nicbou wrote: post #223
tachyonbeam wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Changing a default isn't banning a word. Yes it is. This change is effectively reflecting a push, by bullies, to ban the word master, to eliminate it from spoken and written language, that's exactly what's happening.

What bullying was done?

I it was anything like the SQLite push to adopt a CoC for a private project then at least some organized harassment on social media and the very real threat to cut various forms funding.

Re: Update to Git changes the default of init.defaultBranch to main

#227

Post by jobigoud »

aaomidi wrote: post #121
giancarlostoro wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an actual American minority I'm a little upset that instead of someone trying to do something meaningful about racism they bikeshedded this solution. Git was made by a man from Finland, I find it highly unlikely he had nefarious intentions in naming the default branch 'master' and anybody who disagrees really needs to reevaluate everything we know about Linus. He doesn't care about people's attributes, he cares ab…

As another American minority I welcome changes to our tooling landscape and updating out of date language. No this doesn't do anything, but it significantly reduces the amount of time I have to say master in discussions related to code. Something I personally don't feel comfortable saying. No this isn't going to fix systemic racism, but it is setting the precedent that our standards can and should evolve with culture…

But the word master has multiple meanings, only one of them is related to slavery. The fact that all the homonyms are tainted by just one possible meaning is strange and reductive.

Master has cognates in romance languages to mean school professor or music lead. Removing a entire cognate root from discourse because of one of its realization makes the language poorer inmho.

Re: Update to Git changes the default of init.defaultBranch to main

#228

Post by jobigoud »

kalkin wrote: post #33
umvi wrote: post #9

Sigh... sad to see the tech community bullied into compliance over a non-issue by political correctness activists. It's not really that big of a deal (and in some ways "main" is better anyway because it's 2 characters shorter), it's just the principle of the thing that bothers me. I would rather see projects and people stand their ground instead of caving to pressure anytime a twitter mob comes along.

What is the principle that's at stake here?

That things that have nothing to do with US politics shouldn't be dragged into it. Words can have multiple meanings.

Instead of removing a word and all it's homonyms from discourse we should embrace polysemy. Master key, master record, music maestro, master git branch...

Re: Update to Git changes the default of init.defaultBranch to main

#229

Post by nicbou »

josefx wrote: post #226
nicbou wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What bullying was done?

I it was anything like the SQLite push to adopt a CoC for a private project then at least some organized harassment on social media and the very real threat to cut various forms funding.

If.

Re: Update to Git changes the default of init.defaultBranch to main

#230

Post by rzz3 »

tachyonbeam wrote: post #3

If I say "you are the master of your own destiny", is that offensive, because the word "master" is always offensive? I think that "main branch" sounds fine, it makes as much sense as "master branch", but I'm irked that people are always caving to word policing. Like, we're just going to scratch a whole bunch of words from the dictionary because someone somewhere is offended? The other day, people at my workplace were…

> Like, we're just going to scratch a whole bunch of words from the dictionary because someone somewhere is offended?

This. Context and intention is everything.

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