It broke scripts and docs. Funny enough I never liked that name early on, in preference to to hg’s default. But once done for years, no point in changing it.
> For some people changing master -> main isn't a nothing burger, it's actively harmful.
I constantly have pain — years after the Summer of Floyd — from repos I follow which change the name of their master branch from ‘master’ to ‘main,’ which breaks all sorts of tooling, sometimes silently (my local copies stay on ‘master,’ and never get updates), sometimes noisily.
That switching is actively harmful.
> Some people genuinely love the name master and want it to stay and yes, that is weird.
I don’t particularly love it, but it is the correct name for the master version (as opposed to a local copy, or a remote copy, or a feature branch, or a custom branch, or whatever) of a repo.
How is introducing a breaking change "a nothingburger", but resisting a breaking change "a hill to die on"?
It's a breaking change, requiring me to fix CI, local copies, scripts and so on. It really doesn't matter if you rename "master" to "main", or "main" to "GloriousLeaderXiJinping". Just don't, it's harmful because it's a breaking change for no reason.
The change already happened, you're not resisting anything anymore. You're just being annoying.
> Just don't, it's harmful because it's a breaking change for no reason.
If only it were this simple. Many people got pissed off when Github changed their default. For NEW repos. Clearly, many people have more emotional skin in the game than you're willing to admit.
> I don't think a single soul implied they were monsters. There's nothing wrong with having your branch named "master" if, coincidently, that's what you have.
Github themselves tried to push the change on people, and reporting on the issue used phrasing describing the original choice as "no longer appropriate" as if this were some authoritative consensus (e.g. https://www.theserverside.com/feature/Why-GitHub-renamed-its... ). Github's change was disruptive because repositories created on GitHub wouldn't work properly locally in Git (depending on various details) and this was happening to users with very little technical understanding and no reason to care about the underlying political issue.
But aside from that, it's very obvious that many people think there's "something wrong with" using master as the default name. If they didn't, there never would have been an issue in the first place because nobody would have proposed to change it.
There is nobody out there advocating for the change without bringing up some strange hand-waving argument about colonialism. Not a single one of these people can demonstrate how using the name "master" actually causes harm - because it doesn't. But hordes of them are willing to argue for making the change anyway.
> However it's weird if you say master is the "one true name" and it HAS to be master.
Nobody says this. They say that they don't want others pushing (or literally pull-requesting, in many cases) changes on them for ideological reasons that have nothing to do with the business of their project.
> Like, why do you care? That's odd. That's what some people point out.
No, there's nothing strange about it at all. What is "odd" is the rhetorical strategy of trying to shame people for a benign choice, gaslight that they're the ones being insistent and ideological, and then gaslight that no such shaming is occurring.
> For some people changing master -> main isn't a nothing burger, it's actively harmful.
No, what's "actively harmful" is the idea that people should be compelled to change things because outsiders don't like them (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entryism). Also the compatibility break mentioned above.
> > Terms like master-slave carry powerful implications of racial supremacy and oppression, and have no place in our lexicon
> The first part is just true - it's not up for debate. The second part, "it doesn't belong", is just opinion.
The first part is an opinion shared by people obsessed with race. Honestly even disregarding that we're talking about "master" without "slave", "master/slave" outside of technology makes me think of BDSM first. Nothing racial about it.
>Personally I think if you're a die-hard master-slave fan that's weird.
There is no concept of "slave" in git, there are no "slave" branches. That concept has never existed in git's source code. It's master like "master recording".
Ok but where do you think the term comes from? It didn't spawn into common use out of nowhere.
And I'll say - I don't think it matters. It's all stupid bullshit in my eyes. But if it doesn't matter, which it doesn't, then main shouldn't be a problem. In my opinion.
>And I'll say - I don't think it matters. It's all stupid bullshit in my eyes. But if it doesn't matter, which it doesn't, then main shouldn't be a problem. In my opinion.
And I'll say - I don't think it matters. It's all stupid bullshit in my eyes. But if it doesn't matter, which it doesn't, then master shouldn't be a problem. In my opinion.
>Okay I'm not the one who advocated to change master. That's already been done. Now we have people advocating to change BACK to master.
I don't believe that is what's being argued.
>Also really? Audio mastering?
Yes, audio mastering. The developer that created the concept of master branches in git specifically outlined his influence was from the concept of audio mastering (master recordings) [0].
>I don't know if you're bring purposefully obtuse, I hope not, but obviously I meant "master" came from slavery before audio, and audio took that terminology because it was already a popular word.
I don't know if you're bring purposefully delusional, I hope not, but obviously I meant "master" came from master piece before audio, and audio took that terminology because it was already a popular word. Because of, you know, mastering something?
>Yes audio mastering came before git, and slavery came before both. I don't even know why someone would even bother to argue otherwise.
Luckily "master" in this context has absolutely nothing to do with slavery, so your comment is an immaterial non sequitur.
The use of "master" in git has no historical or etymological ties to slavery whatsoever as outlined above. QED.
> The use of "master" in git has no historical or etymological ties to slavery whatsoever as outlined above. QED.
Not the argument I, or anyone else, is making
The use of "master" in Git may remind someone of slavery, which we don't want to do. For their sake. That's the argument actually being made and I think you'll notice it's much harder, if not impossible, to refute. That's the argument you need to target, not whatever high school debate class strawman you can come up with. Anyone can win an argument against an easy, made up argument.
> I'm not the one who advocated to change master. That's already been done.
Only for specific projects. I continue to use "master" for my own projects, because I disagree that the proposed reason to change has merit.
> Now we have people advocating to change BACK to master.
For the existing projects of others? Can you show any examples?
> Also really? Audio mastering?
Disbelief does not constitute an argument.
> And which, pray tell, do you believe came first?
I won't speak for the other poster, but as a matter of simple fact, Git was initially released in 2005, while other VCSes using the term may date as far back as 1969 (https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/21859/); the concept of audio mastering dates to at least the 1920s with the introduction of the microphone (per the Wikipedia link), and in turn presumably has its roots in the idea of a "master copy" of text or artwork to be printed.
> I don't think you actually read that link. Or maybe you're hoping I don't.... The first part is just true - it's not up for debate.
You asked me to demonstrate that people make the argument, because you claimed that people don't make the argument. I showed you someone making the argument, and you have responded by reinforcing that argument.
The claim is that this "powerful implication[s] of racial supremacy" is harmful - we know this because the author is arguing that the change affirmatively should be made, and there is no reason to make the change without an appeal to such harm. But there is no attempt to explain how such harm would actually arise from simply using the terms as technical jargon. One might reasonably infer that the author is somehow claiming that such terminology justifies or advocates for racial supremacy; but there is no attempt to reason through that claim.
There is also no attempt to consider other potential implications of the term, nor the mindset which leads to this interpretation. Implication is only relevant in conjunction with inference, and these inferences are being drawn by clearly politically motivated people.
> Personally I think if you're a die-hard master-slave fan that's weird
Please stop coming back to this strawman. Again, a higher standard of discourse is expected here.
> Okay, and this bothers you why?
For reasons explicitly stated in my comment.
> Um, YOU do. Clearly you are
Again, a higher standard of discourse is expected here.
> YOU'RE an outsider asking python to change for YOU.
I did not ask for any change. I in fact criticized a change. Please stop trying to present change as non-change and vice-versa.
I am also not an outsider. I have been writing code in Python for about 20 years.
> "Doing nothing" IS NOT an apolitical stance.
Yes, it is. This, in your words, is "just true" and "not up for debate". But the fact that you would propose such a thing, perfectly betrays your agenda in posting here.
> the reason why master is used in the first place is inherently political
To be clear, are you asserting that the person who originally chose the term, had the explicit goal of expressing "powerful implications of racial supremacy and oppression" in version control software?
If you are not claiming that, then it is very obvious that "the reason why [the term] is used" is not political.
If you are, then you are, in fact, calling people monsters for sticking with it, and you are also making an inflammatory claim without evidence.
> One might not reasonably infer this because that's the most insane thing I've ever read. Do you just assume everyone else is this insane? They're really not.
Again, a higher standard of discourse is expected here. But I infer this because it is the only way that any sense could possibly be made of the argument.
If we claim anything other than "this terminology somehow justifies or advocates for racial supremacy", then it is immediately clear that nothing the author says about the terminology actually counts against using the terminology.
But the author insists that it is problematic to use the terminology. Therefore that must be the argument.
> But whenever I open up GIMP, I can't help but think about some sexual things.
This is your fault, bluntly.
> inaction CAN BE political.
This is a different claim from what you initially presented.
> Was this act of inaction political? Yes, yes it was. So yes, inaction can be political.
The police officers in your example were demonstrating action, not inaction. They made a conscious choice to ignore a legal duty. That is clearly different from failing to rename something in your code because an activist says you should. Nothing ordinarily obligates me to accept pull requests.
> I'm not asserting that, it seems you're having hallucinations.
Again, a higher standard of discourse is expected here. But I asked a question.
> And, it was known and understood because of... wait for it... slavery. The only reason it's in our lexicon is because of slavery.
First off, no, that is simply untrue: https://www.etymonline.com/word/master . The word is attested in other uses going back to at least the 12th century.
Second, I already addressed the possibility that you were not making such an assertion. In this case your argument also fails. You cede that the term is not used for a political reason, even if it were inseparable from a particular connotation (which isn't the case anyway). Simply having an effect is not the same thing as doing something for the reason of creating that effect.
> I understand it's very easy to win arguments against insane people but you'll have to try harder.
Again, a higher standard of discourse is expected here.
