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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”

#91

Post by thu2111 »

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.

I’m not sure that language creates reality in the way these people seem to think

This is the core dispute underlying a lot of critical theory vs the world culture wars. Certain types of people, typically those who have spent a long time in the education system, believe words and ideas are incredibly powerful, so powerful in fact that you can change the world by changing what words people use. This can be seen in a lot of the (IMO) bizarre or dysfunctional stuff coming out of Silicon Valley lately, like word vector models that were "debiased" to make them give politically correct but false answers about the world, this GitHub debacle, capitalising word black when talking about black people etc..

IMHO most people who haven't been exposed to the professoriate don't think like this. The function is seen as more important than the form. Stating something that's false is true doesn't make it true, it just makes the speaker seem stupid and/or dangerous.

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

#93

Post by eesmith »

tehlike wrote: post #69
eesmith wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because you wrote "it's all very us centric too" - and I struggle to find out how that's a relevant comment given that "GitHub, Inc. is an American multinational", so obviously embedded in the US context, and American interpretation of the words.

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

#94

Post by [deleted] »

ewanm89 wrote: post #80
jakelazaroff wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not why it’s called that: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2019-May/...

Ah, there is a logical fallacy there. That logical fallacy that is just because they reused the same bitkeeper word that they took it from there AND are using it in the same sense. Ultimately this is a strawman, you are putting Bitkeeper's practice and arguments onto git. Slave is never used once in git documentation, never has been and never will be: https://git-scm.com/search/results?search=slave

[deleted]

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

#95

Post by jakelazaroff »

ewanm89 wrote: post #80
jakelazaroff wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not why it’s called that: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2019-May/...

Ah, there is a logical fallacy there. That logical fallacy that is just because they reused the same bitkeeper word that they took it from there AND are using it in the same sense. Ultimately this is a strawman, you are putting Bitkeeper's practice and arguments onto git. Slave is never used once in git documentation, never has been and never will be: https://git-scm.com/search/results?search=slave

That’s fair, but the OP’s conclusion had no supporting premises at all.

Ultimately this is a digression; this change is being made not because of the intentions of the authors of git, but to be considerate of users of GitHub.

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

#96

Post by jakelazaroff »

_y5hn wrote: post #62
jakelazaroff wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Policy changes can only come from people in power. I’m just saying the people in power at GitHub are not political activists.

Pull is literally an alias for fetch followed by merge. GitLab already calls them merge requests, which caused approximately zero drama, so we have empirical evidence that no one actually cares about these things when they can’t pretend to be offended by them.

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

#97

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

roenxi wrote: post #89
luckylion wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> "The argument that associating linking the properties to 'good' and 'bad' could make people feel uncomfortable makes sense to me. "

Then advocates of this should also be campaigning to stop using yellow as the color to indicate warnings, since it's insensitive to Asian-Americans.

But we all know they aren't going to.

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

#98

Post by _y5hn »

andy_ppp wrote: post #85
_y5hn wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ma…

I stand corrected. Thanks!

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

#99

Post by Yetanfou »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #25
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.

No. This silliness is being done, allegedly, for my sake as a minority, and I will not countenance it. If you're a minority and are tired of these word games instead of real change, make yourself heard. Let people know what you think of this pointless "diversity theater".

> If you're a minority and are tired of these word games instead of real change, make yourself heard. Let people know what you think of this pointless "diversity theater".

I am a minority in that I am left-handed. I have not yet discovered my minority powers but I'm sure they are growing and will make themselves clear to me one day so I can take my rightful place among the pantheon of minorities.

To be honest, I hope the opposite is true in that I do hope that the "diversity theatre" will be closed before that time, never to be opened again. Those who play in that theatre claim to support minorities but in fact all they do is drive people apart. It is as if their real purpose is to corral people into minority enclaves, to divide and conquer.

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

#100

Post by ballenf »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #95
ewanm89 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, there is a logical fallacy there. That logical fallacy that is just because they reused the same bitkeeper word that they took it from there AND are using it in the same sense. Ultimately this is a strawman, you are putting Bitkeeper's practice and arguments onto git. Slave is never used once in git documentation, never has been and never will be: https://git-scm.com/search/results?search=slave

That’s fair, but the OP’s conclusion had no supporting premises at all. Ultimately this is a digression; this change is being made not because of the intentions of the authors of git, but to be considerate of users of GitHub.

> to be considerate of users of GitHub

Which users?

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