I'm a strong supporter of social justice. I don't really object to people putting in work to change language like that if they think it's important. Especially when the work required is minimal.
That said, this is slightly ridiculous. Have customers seriously complained about the term "master"? And my impression was that the usage was more similar to "master copy" than "master of the plantation".
Honestly, it's frustrating to me that companies are willing to take token actions like this that are almost completely irrelevant in the scheme of things but unwilling to lose profit by, for example, not contracting with ICE. Actions like this feels like veiled advertising, even when, as I'm sure is true in this case, there are genuine motives behind them. It seems like the structure of corporations allows only the genuine intentions that require little sacrifice to be acted upon.
It's a stupid subject to have a flame war over, but I don't understand the logic at all.
If the word master is considered evil, then what would happen to a Master Degree ? or Dojo Master ? Words have different meanings in different context, let's focus on changing language that changes the way you think.
Which makes it actively harmful: Anything you do which is even somewhat ridiculous can be seized upon by your political enemies and turned into ammunition against you. They can claim your whole movement is about the ridiculous thing, and use it to derail discussions: "Yes, yes, that point is good, but did you know they renamed something in a piece of software just because it vaguely reminded someone of slavery? Time to talk about that now!"
I agree with you. The thing is that GitHub has EXPLICITLY stated that they will not break their operations with ICE. So they are doing "good press" work rather than doing actual support of BLM.
It is when corporations have embraced and monetized counterculture. As if they are part of us but if analyzed by psychologists corporation was an individual was denoted a psychopath, that is why motions like this make me cringe and die a little on inside a little.
I feel the same way, and it’s depressing that people have to risk their reputation over this. If this was about people waving confederate flags or holding Nazi banners, we should do our best to keep those people out because these are symbols of ill intent used to send a clear message of hate towards minorities. But I have never seen people use the noun “master” as a symbol to spread hate. Moreover, I don’t think many people have even thought of slavery when referring to “master” in CS context before it was brought up in this manner.
But all this aside, this would’ve been a no-brainer if renaming the default branch didn’t have other real-world consequences. If it has a possible chance of making people happy, we should by all means do so. However, the proposed change is inevitably going to break many scripts out there that manipulate git repositories and forces additional work for countless people all over the industry. At this point, I think it’s reasonable to rethink whether this is actually going to improve the lives of anyone at all before proceeding.
>That said, this is slightly ridiculous. Have customers seriously complained about the term "master"? And my impression was that the usage was more similar to "master copy" than "master of the plantation".
We have solved poverty, work ethics problems in IT, we have great working culture, great salaries, we put demands and employers just throw money and resources at us. We run out of real problems to solve, so as humans - problem solving and pattern matching machines - we found another problem to solve.
I don't think it's because people are offended at the use of the word master, in this case. I think, that it's symbolic. By making a point of getting rid of the word master, you're showing that black lives matter.
The terminology of master/slave architecture is a direct reference to the working relationships between people on an antebellum plantation. Names should help you understand what things do, and those names do. We also have node that elect leaders, nodes that get fenced, nodes with parents and children, etc...
The terminology of our software architecture, and of our software in general, mirrors that of the real world relationships that they model, reference, or are inspired by. That's a good thing. It helps us understand these systems. It's also true that if this terminology references something we don't like in the real world, we're free to change it. After all, master/slave architecture isn't a perfect modeling of a plantation, it's substantially abstract from that. There are many other relationships in the real world which could be used to describe this architecture.
Terminology is effective when it's stable, so we should be conservative about changing it, but that doesn't mean we should never change it.
As a black person, speaking just for myself, I really do not get the issue around semantics like this. The word "Master" is not synonymous with any race and so does not make me (or anyone I know) uncomfortable. The concept of masters (and slaves) exist and are useful metaphors for naming similar phenomenon. I would much rather focus on issues that make people truly less comfortable in technology, like hiring or sponsoring practices in organizations. If there truly are (black) people offended by this nomenclature, I would not oppose changing it but I honestly don't know any.
Agreed. It's just white people trying to feel good about themselves. I know many POCs and black people who have bigger concerns -- not getting killed by police, equal pay, etc. -- than the name of a damn git branch.
It just seems like an ultimately meaningless gesture. Is erasing the word "master" from the English language going to actually help anyone? What's next - is the lock company Master Lock going to have to change their company name?
Agreed. I think if anything this a the Streisand effect too, in that, most people didn't think slavery when they read the word 'master' in the context of branches.
Now this is all people will think about and if they change the word to 'main' it will get memed and ridiculed and mocked to oblivion because of the huge inconvenience it will cause.
Superficial changes like this are easy, actually changing hiring is harder. One thinks this is being done to quell demands for actual substantive change.
Gonna be a little bold here and say that even if there are people offended by this nomenclature, probably it still shouldn't change.
No problem that can be fixed by changing the default name of the branch created by git init will, in so doing, meaningfully soothe any sincere moral wound.
This is just so damn pointless. It will cause some "great" controversy, people will be called white supremacists for refusing to stop saying master.
Now even if this catches on, then yeah OK I'll start naming my branches as main unless I want to make a political statement, which would just add to confusion when developing.
Meanwhile these people will pat each other on the back, yell "yeah! We sure made a difference." while black people keep getting fucked by the system and their lives don't get improved one iota.
I love how this is making everyone mad at progressives. Not one progressive asked for this and not one progressive is going to call people white supremacists for using the word "master".
Let's call a spade a spade and recognize that this was a big company trying to sound "woke" without doing anything.
Using the term master doesn't bother me - in my opinion the idea of the master/slave dynamic is much less problematic when you're talking in the context of bits and bytes flicking up and down on some silicon. Having said that, if it bothers people, change it. I do suspect to a certain extent though that people are more interested in changing it because they're worried it might be offensive to other people than actually finding it offensive themselves.
The follow up tweet from the original reqeustor is:
> 1. “Main” is shorter! Yay brevity!
> 2. It’s even easier to remember, tbh
> 3. If it makes any of my teammates feel an ounce more comfortable, let’s do it!
> 4. If it prevents even a single black person from feeling more isolated in the tech community, feels like a no brainer to me!
1 - Not sure that's an important reason, why not change it to just "M"?
2 - Not for people who are already using git and have lived their entire lives on master (or for those more considerate developers, have lived their entire lives PRing into master)
3 & 4 - This is what I'm talking about, is there anyone who is actually feeling isolated and uncomfortable, or are there just a load of white people who have focused on literally the most unimportant aspect of being a black person in the tech community?
> This is what I'm talking about, is there anyone who is actually feeling isolated and uncomfortable, or are there just a load of white people who have focused on literally the most unimportant aspect of being a black person in the tech community?
I'm a POC in the tech community and couldn't care less about "master" being problematic. The tweets you quoted likely came from a white person who thinks a little to highly of themselves and want to go after low-hanging fruit.
Want to make a difference for POCs and Black people? Vote the racists and profit-driven politicians out of office this November and replace them with people who are more qualified to lead and actually care about the public.
As a mysql DBA, this terminology issue made me uncomfortable for most of the past 15 years. I'm uncertain whether I agree that it's relevant in GitHub terms since we don't have upstream/master -> fork/slave, but it's inspired me to think about the term "master" in the mysql, git, and art proofing spaces simultaneously, so I'm glad they're making the change and I look forward to finding out what I think about it after some time has passed.
I totally agree with 1. If the shorter word is just as clear, it is better. "M" is not clear but "main" is.
And in fact, at work, we use both git and mercurial, and they have slightly different terminologies. In particular, git's "master" is mercurial's "default". The result is that we are sometimes mixing the two. And we naturally ended up calling the master/default branch the "main branch" with the understanding that it is "master" in git and "default" in mercurial.
That we naturally came up with this name means it is a good name. And because it is the shortest, it has my vote.
That you are all used to "master" is no excuse either. There are other version control systems than git, and "master" is not a universal convention. In mercurial, it is "default", and in SVN, it is "trunk". If you are a professional developer, you are probably going to use several different VCS during your career, and it is not a good thing getting too attached to "master".
The main problem I see with the change is that if you are just getting started with git, most training material will refer to "master", and having different conventions can make things confusing at first. Of course, experts know that there is nothing special about "master" and can adapt to any situation, but beginners need guidelines, and we might as well make them consistent.
> or are there just a load of white people who have focused on literally the most unimportant aspect of being a black person in the tech community?
Seems that way. It's actually offensive to suggest that such a person should be offended in the first place. It's a "we know better than you and you should be offended" attitude.
What bugs me about crap like this is that it ignores world history, makes these people feel good about doing nothing of consequence, and takes attention away from things that will actually help.
If you are going to help, actually do something that improves the lives of people. Maybe, you should really put some effort into beefing up the Computer Science programs in black high schools and colleges? You are Microsoft, and had a damn policy of only hiring people from certain schools for certain job areas. In 90, one of your damn reps told a classroom of students that they were only good for "help desk" positions because of the school they went to. I'm betting some all black colleges were not on the hire list for actual developer jobs.
Actually doing something useful is hard, this is just signalling how cool you are.
I understand that you are trying to be constructive, but I'm quite surprised by your use of "black high school" and "black colleges". Is it still a thing in the US?
Wouldn't focusing on fixing this situation be more beneficial than reinforcing it?
I tend to bring this up in terms of hiring initiatives as well... if there are X% of people are of $identity Z in terms of the field in practice (let's say 20% female in software engineering). And a large company tries to hit 50% in hiring, they're actually reducing diversity across the industry.
What they should be doing is scholarship and mentoring programs to increase the base if that is their real goal. But that takes actual effort and costs real money.
I really don't care what the default name for a branch is. I don't care if people want to change it. Hell, if GitHub starts defaulting to "main" instead of "master" I probably won't even care enough to change it from "main" to anything else in any new repos.
What I care about is that this will inevitably lead to companies and individuals that, for any reason (due to having the name "master" hardcoded in a lot of scripts, for instance), do not make this change in their repositories being labeled as being pro-racism.
We all know how this goes.
This insanity just grows every single day. The purity policing grows ever more intense. It's making my world view bleaker by the minute.
“Waiting for protests at universities to change the Masters degree to Main degree.” Cracked me up.
I’ve never considered “master” branch anything odd, saying “master copy” makes sense. What about music? “Remastering” something... or the terminology around mastering a skill?
Things are a bit out of control. As people say if you look at that term and the first thought is race related that’s on you.
I could see a desire to remove the word “slave” from any replication business. Since the “s” word is directly loaded. But the “m” word has many other definitions outside of that.
I don't think anyone is going to get in trouble for saying that lol
The only reason someone would, is if they were repeatedly told "hey can you use this term instead?" but they kept using those intentionally to annoy others.
Github inherited it from git, which inherited it from bitkeeper, the DVCS that Linux originally used and the one that inspired git. Bitkeeper used a master/slave architecture that git dropped.
Nobody cares about the black slave auctions going on in Libya RIGHT NOW. But we are going to remove the word master from our software because it offends people whose ancestors were slaves generations ago.
Honest question: are there people out there who are legitimately uncomfortable/upset about the usage of the terms "master" and "slave" in the context of technology? Or is this more so people trying to be too socially "woke" and assuming something to be offensive when it is not?
Master/slave are pretty commonly used terms whenever we talk about things like distributed systems and communication buses. Essentially everywhere that one process, controller, computer, etc. is meant to have authority or control over some other entity or entities, this is often described as a master-slave relationship.
The word “master” still makes sense to me, as it has many different meanings, most of which are appropriate for how they are used in technology.
However I have always felt that the word “slave” (as the counterpart to master) was/is a mistake. It seems to be a relic of the past where people weren’t really thinking through the terminology they chose.
More modern approaches typically use other word pairs, like master/minion, sever/client, active/backup, master/agent, etc. Different pairs are chosen that better describe the relationships, and I suspect those choices were made, at least in some way, to avoid using the term “slave”.
Yes, there are legitimately people who believe the master-slave terminology trivializes American slavery. They are mostly in the U.S. and probably a minority of programmers but they exist.
But in this case, there's not even a slave branch.
"main" does seem like an objectively better word to use. The definition fits better in almost every use case.
May seem like a silly gesture to some, but imagine feeling an emotional trigger every time you had to use a basic tool for your job. That'd piss me off.
I guess the question is, has anyone said that they were personally hurt or offended by it. If anyone was individually affected and not just hurt on behalf of someone else, then by all means make the change.
However, if not, it looks like a cynical publicity grab in light of recent headlines.
put more time into rebuilding the communities in which you physically reside than into bikeshedding quick symbolic actions to numb your conscience.
donate the cash equivalent to the engineering hours required to make and test this name change to BLM instead, and get something of actual consequence done.
Dear friends, do you think you’ll get anywhere in this if you learn all the right words but never do anything? Does merely talking about faith indicate that a person really has it? For instance, you come upon an old friend dressed in rags and half-starved and say, “Good morning, friend! Be clothed in Christ! Be filled with the Holy Spirit!” and walk off without providing so much as a coat or a cup of soup—where does that get you? Isn’t it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense?
It's a self censoring in western.
It's anti-intellect.
It happened and is happening in China.
The result is a small group shuts up everyone. They could tag everything they don't like and stop using it, e.g. winnie.
Please don't let it happen.
It's being sensitive to how words can undermine entire classes of people. Growing up kids used to say "that's so gay" all the time in school. Did they literally mean a shoe was homosexual? No, but they're using a sexuality in a bad or derogatory sense. And that sucks and is wrong, and being gay, it was offensive and destructive to hear. Luckily people eventually shifted away from it with some awareness.
This isn't the same thing as a government censoring opposition or 'insults' to the dear leader.
I kind of get it, there's no real reason the default branch should be named master, but where do we stop? Will everyone with a master's degree have to update their resumes?
It stops when almost every word is offensive to someone in one way, shape, or form, and we are all forced to communicate in binary... excuse me, ones and zeros.
I think what really bugs me about shit like this is it's just make-work. It's easy, mindless, and completely pointless work that is going to make some people feel like they've actually accomplished something. There are real problems in the world right now. This is not one of them.
It's an old one, but relevant to the topic:
Antirez from Redis wrote a blog article on this topic (demands to change master-slave terminology in Redis sources) roughly 2 years ago, http://antirez.com/news/122.
Making these words disappear is a disservice to fighting racism (and other culturally ingrained inequality.)
To address systemic racism, we need to change people's preconceptions and prejudices. These are things that are picked up and learned from other people in one's environment. Removing these words makes them even more intangible than they already are.
Creating prejudice is easy to communicate. Removing it, on the other hand, is an "absence" of something, which is much harder to get across linguistically, semantically and emotionally.
Do we have a national problem with pythons attacking a certain segment of our population? No? But you may be right that it's insensitive to those suffering from ophidiophobia.
Personally I think this is a mistake. As we all know, English words have context, the meaning is adaptive depending on the situation. "master" branch has precedent, we have trained our brains to think about "rebasing onto master". This small change will be disruptive, forcing us to unlearn existing, common phrases. Whitelist & blacklist I support discontinuing, however master is a homonym so doesn't have the same obvious connotations.
If it helps normalise the removal of problematic terminology in tech then this feels like a positive thing. Software development has a troubling history of being an overwhelmingly straight, white, male space, ridding ourselves of terminology that causes friction to new developers who don't fit the standard model has got to be a good thing.
I'm certain that most people would see renaming master to main as fairly benign. However. if a company like Github can be open to making a change like this, even if it is purely symbolic, it sends a message that changes to the status quo are possible.
I've also seen some comments complain about the technical difficulty of this change. If this forces developers to put some effort into updating tools that are hardcoded to refer to the primary branch as master then it's good from a purely technical perspective. Especially to help those of us following trunk-based development who already refer it as the trunk.
> Software development has a troubling history of being an overwhelmingly straight, white, male space...
Software engineering is incredibly diverse. There are many East Asians, South Asians, Middle Easterners, and people from underprivileged backgrounds from former Soviet block countries. It also has a relatively high percentage of just unique folks.
Software engineering also has a diversity problem with respect to female, Latino, and black engineers in particular.
I'm just pointing out that "overwhelmingly white" is quite inaccurate.
I don't often comment on things, but this seems like a slippery slope and a process that I'd like to counteract in some way, so input/comments are welcome. Original comment copied below:
I'd prefer it if things didn't change, including the master/slave terminology (the 'master' branch doesn't even have a 'slave' in git...)
Have the words themselves become bad to use? It seems that this is a USA centric view anyway with its history (and even then it seems ridiculous--why can't these things be compartmentalised as technical terms?)
Slavery certainly still exists in the world, and has existed in most places at some point. Should we rename 'slavery' to something else too while we're at it? Or forget it exists and existed?
Certainly certain terms become antiquated over time, like the vocabulary used in Emacs (yank/buffer/etc vs cut/window/tab/...), but master/slave doesn't seem to be there yet.
I wonder if there's some way to counteract this newspeak stuff? I think it's harmful that these things happen for such frivolous reasons. Does one just have to be as loud as the minority that drives these things, to counteract it?
Why no one is addressing the biggest problem about programming: separating bits to 0s and 1s. Not only that, but also 0s have no value unless they are led by 1.
Chattel slavery and slave markets have existed in Mauritania since before the first Europeans even set foot in Africa, and to this day they refuse to end the practice and have told the UN directly that they refuse to end the practice every time another UN member raises a fuss about it.
So yes, this is a token action meant to appease those that are never truly appeased due to their rapid movement of goalposts.
If we want we could remove "master" from everyday usage:
master branch/copy - that's your main or primary
master degree - is now an expert degree
martial arts master - congratulations, you're a guru!
master bedroom - is now your main, great or grand bedroom (in fact it used to be called the main bedroom not that long ago)
skill mastery - you quashed it!
Should we make these changes? I don't know, I'm a white guy. What I do know is it's time to put an end to systemic racism. If making these seemingly small changes are enough to change people's worldview in a meaningful way then I think we should explore it. There's potentially a lot to gain for such seemingly trivial and small changes in word usage.
Microsoft's shareholders, during last Dec's meeting, rejected Arjuna Capital's proposal that a report be compiled on the gender pay gap across Microsoft, specifically to include "the percentage global median pay gap between male and female employees across race and ethnicity, including base, bonus and equity compensation."
This makes me sad. The only thing I can do in a case like that is to ABANDON every tool (having a replacement) whenever the company / group behind it starts to drift from the core idea toward strange waters having nothing to do with the objectives of that group... I urge you to do the same. Consider that personal integrity (calling a scam a scam is a matter of honor) is a crucial factor in being in a good relationship with oneself. Let's not accept immaturity as a new norm. Let's slowly and methodically make unfit ideas die, like evolution does. Peace.
PS: I never thought that I 'll live thru that kind of crap from tech industry on a large scale.
PS2: Think what would happen if evolution would be so easy on its creatures, leaving partially-sound ideas as blueprints for the humanity to deal with. You eat an apple, and you crash your teeth on an unexpected brick of gold inside of it. What? Although gold is precious, a bar of gold found that way is a misery. And it makes the existence of that kind of apple just... Inelegant. Wise nature doesn't do that, and you shouldn't too. Some things are the way they are because it's the most optimal way for them to be. The passage of time is an excellent tutor of what might be considered as a proven solution. The master branch concept has been working for a long time. I have it in my muscle memory by now. And NOW some kind of enlightened, progressive geniuses are going to tinker with how the feedback loops between my mind and the universe have been set up? No way bozos. Get back to school. Take some lessons on philosophy, and maybe even oh history, so you can understand that a wise man isn't going to speak until it's needed. Not even to mention that he isn't going to progressively cry on anyone's shoulder that he doesn't like a this or that definition. I'm a master of my own self, therefore I'm a racist. Said no one to anyone ;) One thing is sure - I'm not going to be a slave to the puppets of the neo-marxist war on language.
It's sad to hear this instead of people taking action against actual slavery.
This is onomatophobia, fear of hearing names. Github is catering to people trying to ignore the problem (slavery) that still exists because of inaction instead of clearing the name "master" from the bad connotation. Logically, it's difficult to battle problems (like slavery) by forgetting it or ignoring that it exists in the first place.
The change is counter-productive for both social and technical contributions.
All the time and money that will go into this would be much better spent donating to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund or another organization fighting to solve the real problems.
Ok, I have to ask - will one of them be a synonym? I imagine there are millions of hardcoded words out there that will break unless they both map to the same thing.
I'm not really sure what this would look like in practice. Perhaps this would only apply to new repositories, or maybe it will only be the default default. It has never been mandatory for the default branch to be called "master" -- it's just the default value from git and GitHub.
I suppose we will just need to wait and see what happens.
While we're at it, isn't the `git` word offensive? I mean, based on https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/git git means foolish or worthless person! It's not acceptable to call any person worthless! Please change this name.
So there is an actual problem that they could work on. Often the branch which most users should clone and use is not the bleeding edge working branch, which often is master. It would be nice if you could set the default branch for cloning for most users somehow.
companies like github should remain apolitical. this is pure nonesense, merely a show of force by otherwise impotent and misguided liberals. take your outrage somewhere else.
> 4. If it prevents even a single black person from feeling more isolated in the tech community, feels like a no brainer to me!
Does/did slavery only affect black people?
It’s really tiresome to see companies and celebrities voice support for equality, freedom, human rights in America while staying quiet (and even telling people to keep politics away from their platform) when it comes to the Hong Kong protests.
Bougie malcontents LARPing as revolutionaries and moving from industry to industry like a swarm of locusts has been going on since at least the '90s, it's just now their ability to be noticed is greater due to advances in communications platforms.
Master/Slave labeling IS weird. When I first saw it in reference to drive configurations, I recall thinking how maybe there was a better way to label them.
But as others pointed out here, "Master" branch is not using that source for the term. Changing it in this context is actively harmful to BLM and race equality.
So, ignore this and don't be a pussy. (Historically pussy == cat by the way. So I am bringing this phrase back for the same reasons that my Master branch and Blacklist/Whitelist are historically clean terms.)
I've said it before, and I predict it now again: a language that is named after valuable mineral chunks that are often/usually/predominately mined by slave labor in predominately non-white countries is better thinking about a rebrand.
Especially when it's basically ground zero for SJW activity in software development.
We're in a "six degrees of separation" between anything widely used in culture and something that can be deemed "racist." If you look, you will find something, no matter how stretched or tenuous the connection.
zucker42|5 years ago
That said, this is slightly ridiculous. Have customers seriously complained about the term "master"? And my impression was that the usage was more similar to "master copy" than "master of the plantation".
Honestly, it's frustrating to me that companies are willing to take token actions like this that are almost completely irrelevant in the scheme of things but unwilling to lose profit by, for example, not contracting with ICE. Actions like this feels like veiled advertising, even when, as I'm sure is true in this case, there are genuine motives behind them. It seems like the structure of corporations allows only the genuine intentions that require little sacrifice to be acted upon.
It's a stupid subject to have a flame war over, but I don't understand the logic at all.
aespinoza|5 years ago
Master represents the final version of a component or software which ends up in production. It is the same meaning as an audio master (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastering_(audio))
If the word master is considered evil, then what would happen to a Master Degree ? or Dojo Master ? Words have different meanings in different context, let's focus on changing language that changes the way you think.
Foxboron|5 years ago
Evidently, this is a relic from bitkeeper which uses the "master/slave" terminology.
https://github.com/bitkeeper-scm/bitkeeper/blob/master/doc/H...
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2019-May/...
msla|5 years ago
Which makes it actively harmful: Anything you do which is even somewhat ridiculous can be seized upon by your political enemies and turned into ammunition against you. They can claim your whole movement is about the ridiculous thing, and use it to derail discussions: "Yes, yes, that point is good, but did you know they renamed something in a piece of software just because it vaguely reminded someone of slavery? Time to talk about that now!"
Justsignedup|5 years ago
perlpimp|5 years ago
waon|5 years ago
But all this aside, this would’ve been a no-brainer if renaming the default branch didn’t have other real-world consequences. If it has a possible chance of making people happy, we should by all means do so. However, the proposed change is inevitably going to break many scripts out there that manipulate git repositories and forces additional work for countless people all over the industry. At this point, I think it’s reasonable to rethink whether this is actually going to improve the lives of anyone at all before proceeding.
akerro|5 years ago
We have solved poverty, work ethics problems in IT, we have great working culture, great salaries, we put demands and employers just throw money and resources at us. We run out of real problems to solve, so as humans - problem solving and pattern matching machines - we found another problem to solve.
juanuys|5 years ago
EDIT: in case anyone's confused: MC = Master of Ceremonies
IAmEveryone|5 years ago
[deleted]
snlacks|5 years ago
_never_k|5 years ago
The terminology of our software architecture, and of our software in general, mirrors that of the real world relationships that they model, reference, or are inspired by. That's a good thing. It helps us understand these systems. It's also true that if this terminology references something we don't like in the real world, we're free to change it. After all, master/slave architecture isn't a perfect modeling of a plantation, it's substantially abstract from that. There are many other relationships in the real world which could be used to describe this architecture.
Terminology is effective when it's stable, so we should be conservative about changing it, but that doesn't mean we should never change it.
takinola|5 years ago
coldsnap427|5 years ago
umvi|5 years ago
racl101|5 years ago
Now this is all people will think about and if they change the word to 'main' it will get memed and ridiculed and mocked to oblivion because of the huge inconvenience it will cause.
It will have so many unintended consequences.
It solves nothing honestly.
noobermin|5 years ago
MidnightRaver|5 years ago
microcolonel|5 years ago
No problem that can be fixed by changing the default name of the branch created by git init will, in so doing, meaningfully soothe any sincere moral wound.
silveraxe93|5 years ago
Now even if this catches on, then yeah OK I'll start naming my branches as main unless I want to make a political statement, which would just add to confusion when developing.
Meanwhile these people will pat each other on the back, yell "yeah! We sure made a difference." while black people keep getting fucked by the system and their lives don't get improved one iota.
just... why?
mansr|5 years ago
It's called "virtue signalling," I'm told.
mx60s|5 years ago
Let's call a spade a spade and recognize that this was a big company trying to sound "woke" without doing anything.
ojhughes|5 years ago
Traster|5 years ago
The follow up tweet from the original reqeustor is:
> 1. “Main” is shorter! Yay brevity!
> 2. It’s even easier to remember, tbh
> 3. If it makes any of my teammates feel an ounce more comfortable, let’s do it!
> 4. If it prevents even a single black person from feeling more isolated in the tech community, feels like a no brainer to me!
1 - Not sure that's an important reason, why not change it to just "M"?
2 - Not for people who are already using git and have lived their entire lives on master (or for those more considerate developers, have lived their entire lives PRing into master)
3 & 4 - This is what I'm talking about, is there anyone who is actually feeling isolated and uncomfortable, or are there just a load of white people who have focused on literally the most unimportant aspect of being a black person in the tech community?
coldsnap427|5 years ago
I'm a POC in the tech community and couldn't care less about "master" being problematic. The tweets you quoted likely came from a white person who thinks a little to highly of themselves and want to go after low-hanging fruit.
Want to make a difference for POCs and Black people? Vote the racists and profit-driven politicians out of office this November and replace them with people who are more qualified to lead and actually care about the public.
floatingatoll|5 years ago
GuB-42|5 years ago
And in fact, at work, we use both git and mercurial, and they have slightly different terminologies. In particular, git's "master" is mercurial's "default". The result is that we are sometimes mixing the two. And we naturally ended up calling the master/default branch the "main branch" with the understanding that it is "master" in git and "default" in mercurial.
That we naturally came up with this name means it is a good name. And because it is the shortest, it has my vote.
That you are all used to "master" is no excuse either. There are other version control systems than git, and "master" is not a universal convention. In mercurial, it is "default", and in SVN, it is "trunk". If you are a professional developer, you are probably going to use several different VCS during your career, and it is not a good thing getting too attached to "master".
The main problem I see with the change is that if you are just getting started with git, most training material will refer to "master", and having different conventions can make things confusing at first. Of course, experts know that there is nothing special about "master" and can adapt to any situation, but beginners need guidelines, and we might as well make them consistent.
apta|5 years ago
Seems that way. It's actually offensive to suggest that such a person should be offended in the first place. It's a "we know better than you and you should be offended" attitude.
protomyth|5 years ago
If you are going to help, actually do something that improves the lives of people. Maybe, you should really put some effort into beefing up the Computer Science programs in black high schools and colleges? You are Microsoft, and had a damn policy of only hiring people from certain schools for certain job areas. In 90, one of your damn reps told a classroom of students that they were only good for "help desk" positions because of the school they went to. I'm betting some all black colleges were not on the hire list for actual developer jobs.
Actually doing something useful is hard, this is just signalling how cool you are.
Seb-C|5 years ago
Wouldn't focusing on fixing this situation be more beneficial than reinforcing it?
tracker1|5 years ago
What they should be doing is scholarship and mentoring programs to increase the base if that is their real goal. But that takes actual effort and costs real money.
floatingatoll|5 years ago
clint|5 years ago
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pcstl|5 years ago
What I care about is that this will inevitably lead to companies and individuals that, for any reason (due to having the name "master" hardcoded in a lot of scripts, for instance), do not make this change in their repositories being labeled as being pro-racism.
We all know how this goes.
This insanity just grows every single day. The purity policing grows ever more intense. It's making my world view bleaker by the minute.
mike503|5 years ago
I’ve never considered “master” branch anything odd, saying “master copy” makes sense. What about music? “Remastering” something... or the terminology around mastering a skill?
Things are a bit out of control. As people say if you look at that term and the first thought is race related that’s on you.
I could see a desire to remove the word “slave” from any replication business. Since the “s” word is directly loaded. But the “m” word has many other definitions outside of that.
0x3d3d3d|5 years ago
I understand these things stem from a place of discomfort with the racial crisis in the US - and I applaud the intentions.
However, these requests are not inclusive to:
- The foreigner in your team trying to think and communicate in English, while tip-toeing around whatever was deemed offensive this week on Twitter.
- The developer in Botswana trying to keep up with this week's terminology changes as dictated by Twitter influencers in the US.
I dread the day when someone gets in trouble for saying "Hey guys, I added the URL in the whitelist and pushed it to master"
stnmtn|5 years ago
The only reason someone would, is if they were repeatedly told "hey can you use this term instead?" but they kept using those intentionally to annoy others.
crucialfelix|5 years ago
But the use of master here is from 5 b: an original from which copies can be made especially : a master recording (such as a magnetic tape)
There is no implied slave.
It's derived from masterpiece. Something that a master craftsman has created.
Master has many definitions and usages. Master of a slave is only one minor usage.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/master
_never_k|5 years ago
https://github.com/bitkeeper-scm/bitkeeper/blob/master/doc/H...
crucialfelix|5 years ago
https://github.com/bitkeeper-scm/bitkeeper/blob/master/doc/H...
bobjohnee|5 years ago
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catsdanxe|5 years ago
EForEndeavour|5 years ago
globular-toast|5 years ago
arvigeus|5 years ago
Rapzid|5 years ago
KayL|5 years ago
kickopotomus|5 years ago
Master/slave are pretty commonly used terms whenever we talk about things like distributed systems and communication buses. Essentially everywhere that one process, controller, computer, etc. is meant to have authority or control over some other entity or entities, this is often described as a master-slave relationship.
orev|5 years ago
However I have always felt that the word “slave” (as the counterpart to master) was/is a mistake. It seems to be a relic of the past where people weren’t really thinking through the terminology they chose.
More modern approaches typically use other word pairs, like master/minion, sever/client, active/backup, master/agent, etc. Different pairs are chosen that better describe the relationships, and I suspect those choices were made, at least in some way, to avoid using the term “slave”.
zucker42|5 years ago
But in this case, there's not even a slave branch.
tracker1|5 years ago
gyrgtyn|5 years ago
programmarchy|5 years ago
May seem like a silly gesture to some, but imagine feeling an emotional trigger every time you had to use a basic tool for your job. That'd piss me off.
vivekd|5 years ago
However, if not, it looks like a cynical publicity grab in light of recent headlines.
throwaway1997|5 years ago
wackro|5 years ago
unknown|5 years ago
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globular-toast|5 years ago
tracker1|5 years ago
RhysU|5 years ago
gruez|5 years ago
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bobjohnee|5 years ago
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hprotagonist|5 years ago
donate the cash equivalent to the engineering hours required to make and test this name change to BLM instead, and get something of actual consequence done.
Dear friends, do you think you’ll get anywhere in this if you learn all the right words but never do anything? Does merely talking about faith indicate that a person really has it? For instance, you come upon an old friend dressed in rags and half-starved and say, “Good morning, friend! Be clothed in Christ! Be filled with the Holy Spirit!” and walk off without providing so much as a coat or a cup of soup—where does that get you? Isn’t it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense?
sniperliu|5 years ago
azinman2|5 years ago
This isn't the same thing as a government censoring opposition or 'insults' to the dear leader.
ilovetux|5 years ago
catacombs|5 years ago
unknown|5 years ago
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globular-toast|5 years ago
dgellow|5 years ago
m0xte|5 years ago
m0xte|5 years ago
edit: not to mention 30 years of:
if branch in ['master', 'main'] ...
altmind|5 years ago
eqvinox|5 years ago
To address systemic racism, we need to change people's preconceptions and prejudices. These are things that are picked up and learned from other people in one's environment. Removing these words makes them even more intangible than they already are.
Creating prejudice is easy to communicate. Removing it, on the other hand, is an "absence" of something, which is much harder to get across linguistically, semantically and emotionally.
luckylion|5 years ago
silveraxe93|5 years ago
taylodl|5 years ago
ojhughes|5 years ago
akb960|5 years ago
Unless git changes its default branch name to something else, isn't Github's approach futile?
When you "git init", git creates the master branch locally.
And then when you push, I sincerely hope GitHub wouldn't somehow rename that branch to something else...
rgomez|5 years ago
altmind|5 years ago
catacombs|5 years ago
mercury_craze|5 years ago
I'm certain that most people would see renaming master to main as fairly benign. However. if a company like Github can be open to making a change like this, even if it is purely symbolic, it sends a message that changes to the status quo are possible.
I've also seen some comments complain about the technical difficulty of this change. If this forces developers to put some effort into updating tools that are hardcoded to refer to the primary branch as master then it's good from a purely technical perspective. Especially to help those of us following trunk-based development who already refer it as the trunk.
humanrebar|5 years ago
Software engineering is incredibly diverse. There are many East Asians, South Asians, Middle Easterners, and people from underprivileged backgrounds from former Soviet block countries. It also has a relatively high percentage of just unique folks.
Software engineering also has a diversity problem with respect to female, Latino, and black engineers in particular.
I'm just pointing out that "overwhelmingly white" is quite inaccurate.
waheoo|5 years ago
nycmattw|5 years ago
doubleunplussed|5 years ago
penguin_booze|5 years ago
ekns|5 years ago
I don't often comment on things, but this seems like a slippery slope and a process that I'd like to counteract in some way, so input/comments are welcome. Original comment copied below:
I'd prefer it if things didn't change, including the master/slave terminology (the 'master' branch doesn't even have a 'slave' in git...)
Have the words themselves become bad to use? It seems that this is a USA centric view anyway with its history (and even then it seems ridiculous--why can't these things be compartmentalised as technical terms?)
Slavery certainly still exists in the world, and has existed in most places at some point. Should we rename 'slavery' to something else too while we're at it? Or forget it exists and existed?
Certainly certain terms become antiquated over time, like the vocabulary used in Emacs (yank/buffer/etc vs cut/window/tab/...), but master/slave doesn't seem to be there yet.
I wonder if there's some way to counteract this newspeak stuff? I think it's harmful that these things happen for such frivolous reasons. Does one just have to be as loud as the minority that drives these things, to counteract it?
arvigeus|5 years ago
This is outrageous!
TheChaplain|5 years ago
qazpot|5 years ago
partyboat1586|5 years ago
I don't mind renaming it but it feels like a token action without any real weight.
thejynxed|5 years ago
So yes, this is a token action meant to appease those that are never truly appeased due to their rapid movement of goalposts.
welder|5 years ago
sbc100|5 years ago
j-pb|5 years ago
zucker42|5 years ago
taylodl|5 years ago
master branch/copy - that's your main or primary
master degree - is now an expert degree
martial arts master - congratulations, you're a guru!
master bedroom - is now your main, great or grand bedroom (in fact it used to be called the main bedroom not that long ago)
skill mastery - you quashed it!
Should we make these changes? I don't know, I'm a white guy. What I do know is it's time to put an end to systemic racism. If making these seemingly small changes are enough to change people's worldview in a meaningful way then I think we should explore it. There's potentially a lot to gain for such seemingly trivial and small changes in word usage.
doubleunplussed|5 years ago
anton000|5 years ago
Microsoft's shareholders, during last Dec's meeting, rejected Arjuna Capital's proposal that a report be compiled on the gender pay gap across Microsoft, specifically to include "the percentage global median pay gap between male and female employees across race and ethnicity, including base, bonus and equity compensation."
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-12-04-microsoft-...
user_agent|5 years ago
valand|5 years ago
This is onomatophobia, fear of hearing names. Github is catering to people trying to ignore the problem (slavery) that still exists because of inaction instead of clearing the name "master" from the bad connotation. Logically, it's difficult to battle problems (like slavery) by forgetting it or ignoring that it exists in the first place.
The change is counter-productive for both social and technical contributions.
noxer|5 years ago
Anyway, Fossils main branch is called "trunk" which actually makes more sense than "master" especially because Fossil also has leafs.
hypewatch|5 years ago
chmaynard|5 years ago
qwtel|5 years ago
lowmemcpu|5 years ago
dacohenii|5 years ago
I suppose we will just need to wait and see what happens.
KayL|5 years ago
`root` is better if you really want to make a change. Or rand() is your friend.
Maybe I'm not a native English speaker. After knowing the history of Master/Slave. I still not linking them to the bad side.
If they can, rename `Git` also. Acutally I have some complaints from my clients before.
andai|5 years ago
tracker1|5 years ago
based2|5 years ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12736061
unknown|5 years ago
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dvtkrlbs|5 years ago
benmw333|5 years ago
bigtex|5 years ago
andai|5 years ago
magnio|5 years ago
If the word master makes some black people feel uncomfortable, the issue isn't git. It lies in the society.
miguelmota|5 years ago
thiht|5 years ago
lildata|5 years ago
unknown|5 years ago
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unknown|5 years ago
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al_chemist|5 years ago
MidnightRaver|5 years ago
waheoo|5 years ago
jhallenworld|5 years ago
Edit: so it does! You learn something new...
gruez|5 years ago
rgoulter|5 years ago
unknown|5 years ago
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qqj|5 years ago
throwaway9482|5 years ago
abc-xyz|5 years ago
Does/did slavery only affect black people?
It’s really tiresome to see companies and celebrities voice support for equality, freedom, human rights in America while staying quiet (and even telling people to keep politics away from their platform) when it comes to the Hong Kong protests.
coronadisaster|5 years ago
FriendlyNormie|5 years ago
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aezakmi|5 years ago
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apta|5 years ago
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thejynxed|5 years ago
mydongle|5 years ago
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chaosqueue|5 years ago
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psychometry|5 years ago
bobjohnee|5 years ago
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creshal|5 years ago
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gyrgtyn|5 years ago
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fasteddie31003|5 years ago
detaro|5 years ago
sgt|5 years ago
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ArtDev|5 years ago
But as others pointed out here, "Master" branch is not using that source for the term. Changing it in this context is actively harmful to BLM and race equality.
So, ignore this and don't be a pussy. (Historically pussy == cat by the way. So I am bringing this phrase back for the same reasons that my Master branch and Blacklist/Whitelist are historically clean terms.)
luckylion|5 years ago
Especially when it's basically ground zero for SJW activity in software development.
nathanaldensr|5 years ago
dgellow|5 years ago