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GitHub, fuck your name change

mooseyanon.medium.com

321–330 of 1001 posts

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#321

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…

Perhaps, in the spirit of sharing useful insight within these kinds of discussions, as a black American you could educate me about something? For context, I am neither black nor American, I have little time for woke virtue-signalling and fake outrage, but I do want to be properly respectful of others whose background and sensitivities aren't necessarily like my own. With that in mind, I often find socially acceptable…

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Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#322
post #30
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…

>We need to keep voicing these thoughts so that decision-makers in large companies have a chance to hear us and realize that they should focus on more useful issues instead. I suppose they are not doing it for your feeling's sake. They are doing it to avoid being a target of a woke mob feigning offense for their own ideological gain in the on-going identity culture war which is happening in the west.

They are doing it to avoid being a target of a woke mob feigning offense for their own ideological gain in the on-going identity culture war which is happening in the west.

Another example, Bezos recently banned books critical of transgender from being sold on Amazon. And just like that, everyone forgot about Amazon's brutal suppression of union organising activity in their warehouses. Similarly the rest of Big Tech thinks it can toss out token gestures and placate those who are critical of its business practices.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#323
post #21
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.

In the Netherlands, which unlike Germany was significantly involved in the transatlantic slave trade, AFAIK the word meester never had any connotations of slavery, only of expertise and teaching ability (as in a guild master).

It's still used to refer to a male teacher, particularly in elementary schools, as well as being the title used by lawyers.

A slave owner was simply a slavenhouder.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#324

EDIT: For comparison: * "Common Mistakes of New Engineering Managers" (5hrs ago, 110 points, 30 comments) -> rank 2 * this post (2hrs ago, 1000 points, 500 comments) -> rank 20 Why is this post being penalized? Too many black folks commenting and up voting? (/s) ----- Amazingly well written. I'm going to say some things. You'd guess wrongly if you infer that I'm bitter - since I'm personally very lucky. Having been b…

indeed, the thing that struck me was how much of a middle class sausage factory SV-tech is. I had worked in VFX/media for a long time, and we at least knew that we were mostly rich middle class fops. Having heard all the noise about how upset the tech bros were when diversity increased at FAANG, when I got here I expected to have some, well diversity. I went from a team that had 8/30 female-male, which the company fe…

The problem is further upstream. This is the people who graduate. This is the people who enrol. This is the people who fall in love with computers.

At some point, we lose everyone else, and I wish I knew why. I have theories sure, but I don't actually know why.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#325

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?

Note how master is not even the main term used to describe people who had slaves. The term typically used is owner, as in "so and so was a slaveowner." A Marxist would chuckle at the notion that Microsoft would be removing the word "owner" for being offensive.

Both gitlab and github make heavy use of the term owner and ownership. Someone should let them know they have more renaming to do.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#326

I'm a bit late to the game, but I don't understand what this fuss is all about, from a technical point of view. I just created a git repo this morning and the default branch was named "master" (using the git command line). Then I pushed it to github to make it visible, as I have done several times before. The command line instructions at the "new repository" interface on github suggest changing the branch name to mai…

Haven't you thought about how trunk is offensive to people who have been kidnapped?

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#327

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?

That’s my impression too. “Slave” should be replaced with some other more neutral term, but “master” shouldn’t be a problem. There are multiple uses of it in different contexts, but the shared implication is of a definitive source: Master copy; Remastered (music); Master of Arts/Sciences; Mastery Etc. None of that implies a master-slave relationship.

Why not use gimp for slave? Master and gimp.

Edit: No! You see Ivan, it should be master and margarita!

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#328
post #30
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…

>We need to keep voicing these thoughts so that decision-makers in large companies have a chance to hear us and realize that they should focus on more useful issues instead. I suppose they are not doing it for your feeling's sake. They are doing it to avoid being a target of a woke mob feigning offense for their own ideological gain in the on-going identity culture war which is happening in the west.

I hate this “woke mob” branding, there isn’t one, there are people who care about social issues who are individuals. Some go too far, I agree, but we should aim to treat everyone, no matter what they believe (yes even if you think they are really wrong) with respect rather than pigeon holing all their views in with a group you don’t like.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#329
post #32
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…

The logic according to one Microsoft PM is that if one [white virtue signalling person on behalf of some person involuntary labelled as non privileged] person is offended it's one person too much... It didn't sound well thought out then or now...

What if one black person feels discriminated? What if all black people feel discriminated? I think it's clear that the term blacklist is not discriminatory in origin nor is it used in a discriminating way. If, hypothetically, all black people would feel discriminated then there would be a real gain from changing these words, even if they were never discriminatory to begin with. Still, even in that case, I'm not sure if it's a good idea to give in to "feelings". Feeling discriminated is decidedly not the same as being discriminated and it's a slippery slope when hurting other people's feelings becomes a punishable offence.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#330

Christ, I agree with this article so much it hurts. I am convinced future people will find this whole saga quite an interesting anecdote of how, for a period of time, _appearing_ to be "anti-racist" was far more important than doing anything positive. As an aside I find it highly amusing watching the proponents of such changes eat themselves (see Twitch: womxn debacle).

It also mislabels racism as something that can be fixed by modulating language, as if it was a character flaw an not a human flaw . An optical illusion isn't fixed just because you cover it from view with a piece of tape.

Although I agree, I think language does impact perception. I'm not sure if the master/slave, blacklist/whitelist terms play any role, but I'm happy that we generally stopped calling everything gay as an insult. That changed in my short lifetime.

I also noticed that gender neutral nouns and pronouns are more common in writing (for French and German). Again, that's a good thing.

The craziest example I have is the term "useless mouths" in Nazi Germany. Imagine if your group had that label. I'm certainly glad it's not in use anymore.

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