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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”

#81

Post by leghifla »

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…

"Master/slave is debatable, because it isn't actually discriminatory"

As a white man, I cannot tell if some black people are offended by that, but I hope not. I had never thought about racism when discussing technical matters using this terminology... until a few weeks ago.

What surprises me it that some people think that changing technical terms will change the lives of victims of racism.

This debate made me think again about a quote from some engineers from the erlang/OTP team:

"We were working on the R1 release of OTP when a group of us left the office and took the commuter train into Stockholm. We were talking about the ease of killing children, children dying, and us not having to worry about it, as supervisors would trap exits and restart them ... we failed notice the expression of horror on the faces of the old ladies sitting next to us "

Should we now rename child/parent relationship too, to please old ladies?

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

#82

Post by hinkley »

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…

What’s a branch? What do branches connect to? What is a “main branch”? It’s not the trunk. It’s the largest branch.

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

#83

Post by activitypea »

echelon wrote: post #20
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.

I feel like we tried to fix "master" and "slave" in replication terminology (which we should) and it leaked into areas where the semantics were entirely different. "Whitelist" and "blacklist" are also terms that deserve attention, more so than "master branch". The "master" branch is the "master" record. The official copy. The entertainment industry "remasters" their source recordings. The original Star Wars gets rema…

I'm pretty sure Git calls the default branch master in reference to a master recording.

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

#84

Post by hinkley »

unwoundmouse wrote: post #12
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.

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.…

As we transition to more dynamic clusters from older fixed infrastructure arrangements of the past, some of that terminology is dying on its own (not to imply we shouldn’t help it along).

Leader, for instance, implies a more fluid arrangement of the chain of command that better reflects what happens when a new machine takes over for a server that is having problems or being maintained.

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

#85

Post by andy_ppp »

_y5hn wrote: post #61
andy_ppp wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is you who doesn’t understand post modernism, here’s a definition about reality being constructed rather than based on science:

https://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/gengloss/postm-body.html

“ In the postmodern understanding, interpretation is everything; reality only comes into being through our interpretations of what the world means to us individually.”

Hence why the explanation that master should be changed to main to avoid some people thinking git and GitHub are racist.

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

#86

Post by dariosalvi78 »

thundergolfer wrote: post #78
dariosalvi78 wrote: post #74

Honest question: anyone here on HN from a black US background? How do you feel about all this"political revisionism" of the tech jargon? I find it silly to the point that it's offensive, but I'm not black and I don't live in the US.

Not black or USA nationality, but this is not revisionism. The origin of the term in gut is in the master/slave concept and because that’s an ugly (and pointless) association the term is evolving . Terms change. We will adapt just fine, and “main” is a better name anyway, as others have pointed out here in this thread.

The change of the name is not motivated by a better semantical fitness, it's motivated exclusively by the recent, and well justified, political movements in the US. People out there are asking to be treated like human beings and not shot by the police and all they get is a change of a word that has absolutely nothing to do with their conditions or context. Nothing changes for developers, true, but absolutely nothing changes for black people in the US neither. I find it an hypocrisy, which is why I don't like it.

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

#87

Post by [deleted] »

Jonnax wrote: post #22
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.…

Why do their scripts need to be change? It's not retroactively modifying repos.

[deleted]

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

#88

Post by [deleted] »

syspec wrote: post #72
justaj wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 happe…

This only affects new repositories

[deleted]

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

#89

Post by roenxi »

luckylion wrote: post #70
roenxi wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

White & black skin are, practically, inherent qualities that a person can't really do much about. The argument that associating linking the properties to 'good' and 'bad' could make people feel uncomfortable makes sense to me. People (as evidenced by today's headline) do struggle to keep things separate in their head.

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

#90

Post by arvigeus »

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.

Think of all books and online articles that assume that ‘git push —origin master’ is a valid command. What about other companies who don’t adopt this change? Imagine you have to write an article about git and suddenly half of your readers start to complain that your examples don’t work. Yes, software do change a lot, but usually changes having such high impact are carefully thought out if the benefits outweigh negatives. Even people supporting this can’t give any compelling reasons other than “it’s nicer”.

If we take this change out of the current context and let’s say someone suggested that a year ago, do you think it would get the same traction?

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