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 development branch. We will create other release branches from it. Imagine a tree with a trunk from which other branches grow."
One is less likely to ask, "What is the main branch?" The branch name is self-explanatory.
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.
> Political correctness aside, "main" does sound like a more natural name for the main branch
Sure, but who says that what is now called "master" is the main branch?
In my repos, I consider the main branch to be the branch I spend most of my time working on. For simple things that is "master", but for more complex things I'm mostly on some other branch.
'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 remastered frequently.
I don't think that the recording and entertainment industries are going to change these terms, because I don't think they're racially charged in the context in which they're defined and used. There's literally no parallel. In our industry, we have other suspect things called master, which is why it stands out.
In any case, I think it's impossible to rethink this decision now. Walking it back feels icky and political, and we should always err on the side of inclusion anyway.
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 actually discriminatory. But whatever, one for the debate. Master git branches are back in no-brainer territory as something that didn't need to change.
The naming is not accurate though. Many projects branch off from “development” and periodically merge into master. Calling it main more aptly describes the role it has.
You can continue to pretend otherwise, but this is an ideological infiltration into a supposedly rational field. Downvotes or not I'm not going to pretend otherwise.
You may be superficially correct, I’m not sure, but honestly the name of the canonical git branch is not a hill worth dying on.
IMO the right move to battle the more draconian, Orwellian language policing of the cancel culture / “antiracism” dogma is to conserve your energy for the fights worth fighting. This just isn’t one of them.
In one swift stroke, GitHub fixed racism and diversity issues in tech. And all that without spending a penny, awkward outreach programmes or deep soul-searching as to the roots of the problem. In your face, naysayers.
I don't think you can erase words from the vocabulary to get rid of bad undertones in society. If someone is offended by a "master" branch name, I suspect they are easily offended, and might be onto on some crusade. Renaming variables and tech paradigms that refer to computer idioms, not people, is lame. The real problem is misconception and bigotry in people's hearts.
We could stop using the sex/porn industry and reduce the human trafficking epidemic in some countries, or completely stop buying from companies that manufacture in horrible conditions.. or change computer idioms and debate until we're blue.
> If someone is offended by a "master" branch name, I suspect they are easily offended
Worse, it feels like people are taught to be offended more easily, driving the sensitivity up to the max.
<offtopic>
> We could stop using the sex/porn industry
Not going to happen. This industry had existed since times immemorial and is going to exist no matter what for as long as humans will have sex drive (and thus, fantasies and desires). Painting sexual and/or pornographic services as something inherently bad is only going to make it worse by driving industry into a darker shade. I could be terribly mistaken here (and beg pardon and counterarguments if I am), but in my understanding it's social and legal stigmas are what's primarily hurting people.
I don't mean to say there are no issues with that industry. Just saying that blaming it's very existence is not a solution. And - as a personal opinion - there's nothing wrong with sex or porn, as long as it's all well-informed, safe, sane and consensual.
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 don't have a problem with changing the name but the motivation bothers me. For years we've had unintuitive/unfriendly names - an example on this thread was "pull requests", name picked by someone who was so high that he was seeing himself from the 3rd person, in a mirror, while standing on their head.
God forbid we change the names so that they actually start making sense; oh no, we stick with V1 til the heat death of the universe, we wouldn't want to confuse already confused developers by fixing the dumb thing.
Ok, fine, now that you've started, will you fix the rest of the names too? The ones that aren't politically charged, that is.
I suspect that it is not far away the day when the academic degree "master of science" will also be renamed. :) It is complete insanity. We are starting to live in Orwellian world. If you remember in 1984 the abonamation of the language in a way to not allow wrong thinking was one of the characteristics of the totalitarian government. :(
The logic behind the name was that it was like a master record which all other copies (branches) were based on. To be honest I think the original terminology of "trunk" always made more sense given that we have things called "branches" (and the first commit is called the "root commit").
But "main" is probably lees cryptic -- I will admit when I first heard the term "trunk" I thought it was referring to either the UK term for suitcase or US term for a car's boot. And of course git has a general principle of never copying anything that SVN did, I guess that includes naming.
We already have a problem with frequent and, in many cases avoidable, API/interface changes in our industry. Think about the last time you use some library, then it's API changes, and you spend a day fixing this in your codebase.
The fact that this change affects only new repos is not reassuring. There are tons of tutorials, scripts and other stuff out there relying on the default naming ("upstream" is the other branch name that is frequently used). Git is already complex enough, especially for beginners.
Also, other git hosting services (and git itself) still use "master" as the default branch name, which will create even more confusion.
I'm assuming this doesn't actually apply if you follow the more "classic" method of creating a Github repo: creating a local git repo and just adding Github as a remote.
Edit: I figured that Git itself probably wouldn't change the default branch name (at least not easily), but thought that just making it configurable would be a "neutral" way to make it easier for people to do this if they wanted to.
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. Beyond git, i believe master is a power dynamic that exists and is sometimes the best way to model a system - and we should attempt to describe systems clearly unrelated to racism as accurately as possible
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".
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?
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.
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?
It's a change of territory in what amounts to cultural trench warfare. Partisans are constantly antfucking over what is and isn't appropriate terminology, or what constitutes a thinly veiled existential threat.
The change's symbolic significance vastly outweighs its immediate consequence, and naturally people will respond to it within the context it's been made.
Rename of master branch is happening at the company I work at. I find it rather pointless but the company is paying for my time so if they want me to spend time on this then fine by me.
The etymology of "master" according to Wiktionary:
From Middle English maister, mayster, meister, from Old English mǣster, mæġster, mæġester, mæġister, magister (“master”), from Latin magister (“chief, teacher, leader”), from Old Latin magester, from Proto-Indo-European *méǵh₂s, (as in magnus (“great”)) + -ester/-ister
An etymology of the phrases predating this specific use of 'master' (such as 'master recording') might be helpful, but the word 'master' by itself really isn't.
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.
I'm black, although not American. I don't wake up every morning thinking about "how deeply racist the word 'master' is". I'm not stupid, I understand that words can have different meaning depending on the context. All these things have absolutely nothing to do with me or my race, it's just a tiny clique of people who get off asserting power on others, nothing more.
Unfortunately, IT and open source orgs do pander to these people, something they will ultimately regret because these people pushing identity politics everywhere are not reasonable and they will always find something to get outraged at, at the expense of the org itself.
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.
"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.
I'm having trouble understanding why this was flagged. It covers a major change to tool many (most?) developers use including time and reasoning. It's straight to the point, doesn't seem to seem to have much fluff, and isn't really trained with author's option / ideology. Surely much worse and off topic political articles reach the front page without being mass flagged.
On a random note, I've had vouch for flagged articles / comments before but it seems to very irregular. What decides if the "vouch" option is available to a user?
A lot of people are tired of seeing "culture wars" threads, including most likely the mods, since they seem to devolve into a mess of bickering posts.
Personally, I have mixed feelings about it. I'm tired of these threads too but to express no opinion is to allow others to drive the direction of changes that affect our industry.
susam|5 years ago
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 development branch. We will create other release branches from it. Imagine a tree with a trunk from which other branches grow."
One is less likely to ask, "What is the main branch?" The branch name is self-explanatory.
andy_ppp|5 years ago
unknown|5 years ago
[deleted]
tzs|5 years ago
Sure, but who says that what is now called "master" is the main branch?
In my repos, I consider the main branch to be the branch I spend most of my time working on. For simple things that is "master", but for more complex things I'm mostly on some other branch.
hinkley|5 years ago
justRafi|5 years ago
echelon|5 years ago
"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 remastered frequently.
I don't think that the recording and entertainment industries are going to change these terms, because I don't think they're racially charged in the context in which they're defined and used. There's literally no parallel. In our industry, we have other suspect things called master, which is why it stands out.
In any case, I think it's impossible to rethink this decision now. Walking it back feels icky and political, and we should always err on the side of inclusion anyway.
roenxi|5 years ago
The whitelist/blacklist thing is a bit of a no-brainer, that one should change. Master/slave is debatable, because it isn't actually discriminatory. But whatever, one for the debate. Master git branches are back in no-brainer territory as something that didn't need to change.
jakelazaroff|5 years ago
Joeri|5 years ago
emerged|5 years ago
amazingman|5 years ago
IMO the right move to battle the more draconian, Orwellian language policing of the cancel culture / “antiracism” dogma is to conserve your energy for the fights worth fighting. This just isn’t one of them.
brnt|5 years ago
rich_sasha|5 years ago
Oh, wait...
justRafi|5 years ago
We could stop using the sex/porn industry and reduce the human trafficking epidemic in some countries, or completely stop buying from companies that manufacture in horrible conditions.. or change computer idioms and debate until we're blue.
drdaeman|5 years ago
Worse, it feels like people are taught to be offended more easily, driving the sensitivity up to the max.
<offtopic>
> We could stop using the sex/porn industry
Not going to happen. This industry had existed since times immemorial and is going to exist no matter what for as long as humans will have sex drive (and thus, fantasies and desires). Painting sexual and/or pornographic services as something inherently bad is only going to make it worse by driving industry into a darker shade. I could be terribly mistaken here (and beg pardon and counterarguments if I am), but in my understanding it's social and legal stigmas are what's primarily hurting people.
I don't mean to say there are no issues with that industry. Just saying that blaming it's very existence is not a solution. And - as a personal opinion - there's nothing wrong with sex or porn, as long as it's all well-informed, safe, sane and consensual.
</offtopic>
brnt|5 years ago
[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.
minxomat|5 years ago
Jonnax|5 years ago
Isn't that obvious?
unknown|5 years ago
[deleted]
eyeball|5 years ago
Tomis02|5 years ago
God forbid we change the names so that they actually start making sense; oh no, we stick with V1 til the heat death of the universe, we wouldn't want to confuse already confused developers by fixing the dumb thing.
Ok, fine, now that you've started, will you fix the rest of the names too? The ones that aren't politically charged, that is.
ibobev|5 years ago
beebmam|5 years ago
cyphar|5 years ago
But "main" is probably lees cryptic -- I will admit when I first heard the term "trunk" I thought it was referring to either the UK term for suitcase or US term for a car's boot. And of course git has a general principle of never copying anything that SVN did, I guess that includes naming.
627467|5 years ago
spikeseltzer|5 years ago
throwaway_bwicd|5 years ago
The fact that this change affects only new repos is not reassuring. There are tons of tutorials, scripts and other stuff out there relying on the default naming ("upstream" is the other branch name that is frequently used). Git is already complex enough, especially for beginners.
Also, other git hosting services (and git itself) still use "master" as the default branch name, which will create even more confusion.
zerocrates|5 years ago
I'm assuming this doesn't actually apply if you follow the more "classic" method of creating a Github repo: creating a local git repo and just adding Github as a remote.
Edit: I figured that Git itself probably wouldn't change the default branch name (at least not easily), but thought that just making it configurable would be a "neutral" way to make it easier for people to do this if they wanted to.
I guess they, in fact, already did that: https://superuser.com/a/1572156
nprateem|5 years ago
Why should there be?
jakelazaroff|5 years ago
unwoundmouse|5 years ago
ThrowawayR2|5 years ago
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".
arvigeus|5 years ago
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?
scottmsul|5 years ago
bagels|5 years ago
justaj|5 years ago
All of this to give an appearance that social change is happening? Why not address the social issues head-on?
crocodiletears|5 years ago
The change's symbolic significance vastly outweighs its immediate consequence, and naturally people will respond to it within the context it's been made.
s9w|5 years ago
sceptical|5 years ago
I will still call it the master branch though.
userbinator|5 years ago
If you've ever wondered why software quality has taken a nosedive in recent years...
"At least we're diverse!"
Thanks for all the downvotes. The bias in here is really obvious. ;-)
astraloverflow|5 years ago
From Middle English maister, mayster, meister, from Old English mǣster, mæġster, mæġester, mæġister, magister (“master”), from Latin magister (“chief, teacher, leader”), from Old Latin magester, from Proto-Indo-European *méǵh₂s, (as in magnus (“great”)) + -ester/-ister
crooked-v|5 years ago
bhaak|5 years ago
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.
underyx|5 years ago
_y5hn|5 years ago
dariosalvi78|5 years ago
throw_m239339|5 years ago
Unfortunately, IT and open source orgs do pander to these people, something they will ultimately regret because these people pushing identity politics everywhere are not reasonable and they will always find something to get outraged at, at the expense of the org itself.
thundergolfer|5 years ago
Terms change. We will adapt just fine, and “main” is a better name anyway, as others have pointed out here in this thread.
jaimex2|5 years ago
valand|5 years ago
jaimex2|5 years ago
I'm betting Master Chef or Master degrees.
nprateem|5 years ago
FFS. Is this some kind of joke? This sort of PC bullshit is gold for rightwingers.
luckylion|5 years ago
I believe a lot of people realize that, and that's why it was flagged.
ykevinator|5 years ago
non-entity|5 years ago
On a random note, I've had vouch for flagged articles / comments before but it seems to very irregular. What decides if the "vouch" option is available to a user?
ThrowawayR2|5 years ago
Personally, I have mixed feelings about it. I'm tired of these threads too but to express no opinion is to allow others to drive the direction of changes that affect our industry.
slater|5 years ago
[deleted]