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New GitHub repos to have default branches named “main” instead of “master”

zdnet.com

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Re: New GitHub repos to have default branches named “main” instead of “master”

#61

Post by _y5hn »

andy_ppp wrote: post #17
susam wrote: post #11

Political correctness aside, "main" does sound like a more natural name for the main branch. The term "master" for a branch name always felt a little strange to me. One might ask, "What is master?" The answer usually is, "It is the main branch." The same thing held true for "trunk" in the SVN world, although it made more sense. One might ask, "What is trunk?" It requires a lengthy explanation, "It is the main develop…

Master also means principal. Controlling speech due to political correctness is extremely post modern but I’m not sure that language creates reality in the way these people seem to think. Words are not inherently racist it’s how people use them, therefore I’m against changes like these where clearly there’s no racism at all in having a master branch.

Post modern probably doesn't mean what you didn't think it means. Words can be cool, but misused.

Re: New GitHub repos to have default branches named “main” instead of “master”

#62

Post by _y5hn »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #46
scottmsul wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Renaming "pull requests" to "merge requests" isn't politically motivated, whereas this is a top-down change from political activists. I'm worried that society might go down a path where people can't push back out of fear of one's career or safety.

Political activists aren’t in positions of power at GitHub, so it’s not a top-down change. I also disagree that it’s especially political. It’s a small name change to be more considerate. The only reason this is “political” — and “merge requests” wouldn’t be — is that for some reason a small group of people are very loudly offended by it.

A change from people in power is the very definition of top-down change. Words convey meaning.

It's hardly surprising the priesthood of developers rally against any changes to their sacrosankt nonsensical namings. Merge is different from pull/push though.

Re: New GitHub repos to have default branches named “main” instead of “master”

#63

Post by eesmith »

tehlike wrote: post #43
madsmith wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a black developer... this all just makes me a little sad. Terms like master/slave or whitelist/blacklist are common parlance and this attempt to remove these phrases for less well understood phrases just seems like an attempt to whitewash history for little to no gain. I'm a firm believer that language is dynamic and the meaning of words is the meanings we currently associate to them.

And it's all very us centric too. In my native language, we have something called "black notebook" which is essentially a blacklist. It has nothing to do with skin color, never been. It's more reference to bright and dark - it's a list of people you wouldn't do business with. It's very natural for people to use words from of their sensors. We call greenfield)brownfield in a similar manner.

GitHub is a US company. HN is run by a US company.

Re: New GitHub repos to have default branches named “main” instead of “master”

#64

Post by yongjik »

minxomat wrote: post #5
brnt wrote: post #4

I've a Master of Science degree, will that chance too? Is anyone offended by that terminology? [Edit] maybe I should clarify: in my native language master only has the connotation of mastery of a subject. A slave owner can't be called 'master', so we don't have that unpleasant crossover.

The line is always drawn somewhere, to answer the not very well veiled slippery slope argument. If and when that applies to this specific case, history will show. No one demands everything happen all at once.

I'm usually no fan of slippery slope arguments, but this time the slope does feel slippery. If, five years ago, someone argued "What next? Are we going to rename 'master branch' to something else because the term evokes slavery?", I feel most people would have answered "Don't be ridiculous."

Re: New GitHub repos to have default branches named “main” instead of “master”

#65

Post by justaj »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #3

This is a tiny change that has no substantial negative effect on anyone’s life. If they’d renamed “pull requests” to “merge requests” no one would care, at all. Let’s please not make a big deal out of it.

There's already incredible amount of documentation around that uses the word "master". (New) people getting aboard will undoubtedly read the (now stale) documentation and get confused, confusion results in questions, questions result in discussions and discussions take time away from the already overburdened FOSS contributors that make great things happen.

All of this to give an appearance that social change is happening? Why not address the social issues head-on?

Re: New GitHub repos to have default branches named “main” instead of “master”

#66

Post by underyx »

bhaak wrote: post #52

I don‘t mind renaming the default branch. But I’ll see many tools breaking or bugs surfacing because they can’t find the master branch. One repository I used didn’t have a “master” branch but a “Master” branch. That was annoying. Git doesn’t have a concept of a main branch. Maybe we will get that now as a result of GitHub’s change.

The has never been a guarantee that the main branch is called "master". No tool should've been depending on the name of the main branch.

Re: New GitHub repos to have default branches named “main” instead of “master”

#67

Post by eesmith »

MikeTheGreat wrote: post #39
unwoundmouse wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, i highly doubt any developer black or not ever looked and said “wow this master branch naming really makes me feel oppressed.” If this is you, please correct me. However, i do know lots of developers have bash scripts, terminal aliases, python workers that use the “master” terminology that will need to be changed. This seems like an absurd and unnecessary change to me, causing more net damage than benefit.…

This past summer I helped teach a bunch of students to code, students who were from under-represented populations here in the U.S. They were horrified to learn where the 'master' term came from. Switching from master to main is a good change. The 'master-slave' terminology has been used in tech for a while (for example, IDE [0]). Yes, it's not intended to be a direct reference to slavery, but that's where the term or…

A couple of months ago I collected a few similar accounts, which were either given on HN or directly linked to from HN, over the past 10+ years of discussion of this topic.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23763739

Re: New GitHub repos to have default branches named “main” instead of “master”

#68

Post by luckylion »

nprateem wrote: post #8

"Starting next month, all new source code repositories created on GitHub will be named "main" instead of "master" as part of the company's effort to remove unnecessary references to slavery and replace them with more inclusive terms." FFS. Is this some kind of joke? This sort of PC bullshit is gold for rightwingers.

> This sort of PC bullshit is gold for rightwingers.

I believe a lot of people realize that, and that's why it was flagged.

Re: New GitHub repos to have default branches named “main” instead of “master”

#69

Post by tehlike »

eesmith wrote: post #63
tehlike wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's all very us centric too. In my native language, we have something called "black notebook" which is essentially a blacklist. It has nothing to do with skin color, never been. It's more reference to bright and dark - it's a list of people you wouldn't do business with. It's very natural for people to use words from of their sensors. We call greenfield)brownfield in a similar manner.

GitHub is a US company. HN is run by a US company.

So? Blacklist or master words dont have its roots in the us, and they don't have their roots in the racist history either.

Re: New GitHub repos to have default branches named “main” instead of “master”

#70

Post by luckylion »

roenxi wrote: post #45
justRafi wrote: post #13

'master' branch is like a master recording, an original from which copies can be made off. I don't have a Master degree in English, but it feels someone is terribly confused.

That gets to what might be the real issue here. This is a change of something that has no relevance to the master/slave debate. It seems possible that it is being driven by someone who is (a) not that clever and (b) making ego driven decisions. I think that might be what is annoying people. The whitelist/blacklist thing is a bit of a no-brainer, that one should change. Master/slave is debatable, because it isn't actu…

> The whitelist/blacklist thing is a bit of a no-brainer, that one should change.

Why though, it has nothing to do with skin color. Black and white, grey area, there are lots of things involving these colors, but they aren't about skin color, they're about opposites. And there are plenty of other things including color, e.g. black hole, white vest, carte blanche, but they're not about skin color either.

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