from Hacker News

GitHub to replace “master” with alternative term to avoid slavery references

by mindfreeze on 6/14/20, 3:00 PM with 200 comments

  • by NobodyNada on 6/14/20, 3:49 PM

  • by Seb-C on 6/15/20, 3:28 AM

    This is getting ridiculous and annoying.

    When I hear about slavery, I think about the poor people that did not have any freedom, not about black people. There have been african slaves in africa, asian slaves in asia, european slaves in europe and native american slaves in native american civilizations for thousands of years.

    American people are projecting their very own and specific segregation problems onto the whole world by banning words universally useful.

    Forbidding vocabulary like this only reduces the quality of debates on the long term and does not make anything better. That is how dictatorships works.

    If you cannot say the words "slave" and "master", you cannot have a discussion about it, its history and influences on our society and on real people, because otherwise you would be deemed racist. In my country it became racist and implicitly forbidden to say "black people" or "arab people" because otherwise you are instantly deemed to be racist. So now we cannot talk at all about this topic. Politicians certainly won't risk their career by talking about it. So nothing changes, and nothing can actually improve (including the lives or people living today), because we cannot talk about it...

    I will continue to use words however I want.

  • by derefr on 6/14/20, 3:48 PM

    I always understood a VCS “master” branch to be in reference to “master” records / the “mastering” process of audio mixing, which in turn is a use of a sense of the verb “to master” akin to “to master one’s courage”—not conveying dominance, but rather the reaching of an apex in skill.

    If you’re in the market for a replacement that keeps the metaphorical power, though, I might suggest having a “mother” branch. “Mother” functions similarly to “master” in language, forming compounds like “mother ship”, or “mother sauce”, with very similar connotations: being something from which other elements in the set descend/derive; and to which other elements in the set return for some kind of maintenance or synchronization.

  • by exabrial on 6/14/20, 3:54 PM

    We could have a bunch of reform: from reducing the police force size and budget, to removing pointless offenses ("no victim no crime"), to reduce interaction with police, to eliminating all government programs so to eliminate financial dependency on the government (create a toehold for systemic racism)...

    Yet, we're renaming git master to git main. The profound and widespread impact of this will surely sweep the nation and cure systematic racism. /s

    Point being: Everyone is more than willing to say they support change, nobody is willing to do anything difficult, so they put forward crap PR moves like this that are completely non-consequential.

  • by lucb1e on 6/14/20, 3:51 PM

    Welcome to the discussion the Netherlands has been having about Black Pete the last few years. It won't be pretty and there's little you can say against someone who goes "[now that you mention it,] yeah, this is offensive and you know, back in middle school someone did call me black pete once!" so this might go down a similar way.

    I would think "but nobody was ever called 'master' or 'blacklist', that just doesn't work" but look at some of the comments here already. This is looking super polarized. And I'm not talking about the etymologist that brings to light the racial background of a word like blacklist, that's still stating facts even if it legitimizes the claim.

    Not sure I should be posting this comment anyhow but if you value your time you might want to just stay away from the discussion. There are no winners that I have found.

  • by idiocratic on 6/14/20, 4:40 PM

    I'm a very anti-racist and anti-fascist person. I'm in favour of removing slavers and white supremacists statues. But these silly debates in the tech world makes me cringe a little and I wish our community was different. Isn't it of little importance how a branch is named? Let's focus on politics, on inclusion, on essential debates that our societies need to improve and let's not waste our energies changing stupid little things that have no meaning other than to a minority of rich white males from Silicon Valley, as a method to self-redemption. Like giving some money to charities and be done with it, instead of rolling up our sleeves and do some direct work. Very White, American, Protestant thing to do. And very easy. And it's also free marketing, the cynic in me thinks.

  • by mirthflat83 on 6/14/20, 3:45 PM

    > but also terms like "blacklist" and "whitelist" for "allow list" and "deny/exclude list."

    Seriously?

  • by tawaymastergit on 6/14/20, 3:50 PM

    You know there is all of this talk that if you can make just one more person not have to feel discomfort then all of this is all worth it.

    This stuff makes me extremely uncomfortable. I can't keep up with the way that these rules change, and it makes me fearful that I'm going to accidentally say the wrong thing and have my life ruined, despite what my intent might have been.

    It's gotten to the point where during this latest culture war flare up, I am avoiding going to work, my anxiety has increased to the point where I have to use xanax to manage it again, and my productivity has dropped off completely. I am terrified of saying the wrong thing, or meaning to say the right thing but saying it in the wrong way. I have done my normal "hacker" thing and tried to research as much into the grievances that people have so that I can understand them and help work towards change, but that has led me to finding out that some things are considered "hate facts" and you can be labeled a racist for even knowing that they are true.

    These things are effecting my relationships. I'm avoiding some of my friends because of this. I'm afraid to read anything about this for fear of not knowing which things are "hate facts" and which aren't. This is terrifying.

    The state of the world as it is right now is legitimately terrifying to me. I've worked my whole life against racism, against ever biasing myself in any way against people because of things that they can't change, and right now there are so many things, every day, telling me that I'm a monster because of who I am. I almost can't describe to you all how depressing this all is.

    I'm not a monster. I care about people a lot and I go out of my way as much as possible to help them when I can.

  • by zabdmyP on 6/14/20, 3:45 PM

    How many of these activists own a MasterCard? How many black people own one?

    Ironically, outside the US the "Black edition MasterCard" is the top offer (named so, because (surprise) the card is black).

  • by overgard on 6/14/20, 3:47 PM

    I know this is going to be a PC war, but, I'm curious how they technically intend to do this. Is "main" just going to be a visual alias on the site? If so that will be really confusing if the branch is still technically called "master" and needs to be referred to that way in the command line. If they intend to actually rename the branches I don't know how they can do that without breaking all sorts of scripts and build tools.

  • by thefounder on 6/14/20, 3:42 PM

    I guess now the whole master/slave tech should be renamed

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master/slave_(technology)

  • by gdsdfe on 6/14/20, 3:50 PM

    It's not the words that hurt us it's the meaning and weight that we give them ... at this rate, soon, we won't be able to say anything and the lack of communication will deepen the divide.

  • by xixixao on 6/14/20, 4:07 PM

    On the blacklist etc. issue, when you think about it it's actually the other way around. "black" was historically "bad" (not related to race), but it was super convenient that slaves had a darker skin that you could call "black", and things got blurred. No "white" people are actually white and no "black" people are actually black. "white" people are pinkish to light brownish and "black" people are light to dark brown. Of course it doesn't help that "dark" and "light" also have a value associated historically. This is a super unfortunate geo-graphical and historical coincidence that's gonna be hard to untangle (as in we probably can't disassociate the words from their pre-slavery historical meanings that are pretty universal, as in people are afraid when they can't see things -> night -> darkness -> black).

  • by emiraga on 6/14/20, 3:57 PM

    One day we might find historical record of a slave owner holding "main" as a title. Any terminology that implies hierarchy can be construed by social justice to represent a slavery reference.

    In reality, they should just drop this, or call the branch "non_feature", better yet "non_feature_not_that_there_is_anything_wrong_with_being_a_feature"

  • by baryphonic on 6/14/20, 4:01 PM

    I kind of understood when people didn't want to use "master-slave." I didn't agree with it, especially in the context of databases or other redundant distributed systems where the "slaves" really were required to follow all of the commands from the "master," and this relationship was better captured by this term than the bland "primary-secondary." (However, I actually prefer "primary and secondary" when talking about storage drives, since the "primary" drive is more like first among equals rather than something issuing commands.) But I could always understand it, given that "master-slave" has certain connotations.

    This from GitHub, however, makes no sense.

    The word "master" is overloaded. In the sense used in source control, the term has nothing to do with slavery or servitude; it simply is "an original from which copies can be made." In fact, in all of my 10 years of using git, I have yet to see a "slave" branch or anything implying servitude of any kind. And this is ignoring the fact that distributed source control is an inherently egalitarian and liberating proposition (centralized services like GitHub itself notwithstanding).

    And who will benefit from this? What person suffering from oppression is going to be helped by being spared from seeing the word "master" (even without a concomitant term suggesting servitude)?

    Count me out. I'll keep naming my default branch "master," because that's what it is: an original from which to make copies.

    EDIT: In fact, I'd go so far as to say this will only harm the people it's trying to help. How much documentation exists out in the wild referring to the "master" branch? Who is more likely to rely on cobbled together Internet documentation when learning something new and relatively complicated like Git: a person of color without much support or mentorship, or a person from overrepresented groups who can likely just find a friend to ask? How is a person without much of a support network and trying to get into tech going to react when she has read about "checkout master," only to get to GitHub and see only "main."

  • by anjc on 6/14/20, 3:52 PM

    I don't understand the racist connotations given that there are no "slave" branches. Every similar mention of "master" can't change. What words can better describe a master boot record, for example?

  • by temporama1 on 6/14/20, 3:49 PM

    Good one. Nearly had me for a moment.

  • by mnm1 on 6/14/20, 6:43 PM

    It seems to me that black people are asking to not be killed for no reason, to not be treated like second class citizens, to have equal rights not just in law but it reality. In the meantime, white people respond by changing the master branch name. Yeah, they got the message alright. This is going to make black lives matter. Changing words completely unrelated to the oppression of black people is somehow going to help. Or this is just a PR move like most responses, designed to placate and pretend to support the cause without actually doing so.

  • by madmulita on 6/14/20, 3:52 PM

    Great, so "main" now means "master"?

    So, what's the difference?

  • by villasv on 6/14/20, 4:53 PM

    This is such a low impact and harmless change. Even if someone is not to agree with it, why be against it?

    It's not like a small team inside GitHub is going to deplete the world's activism budget and this will hinder the advance of other definitely more important changes.

    I'm sure they will find a way to offer minimal impacts, specially because it's just a default value that can be easily configured.

  • by sand_castles on 6/14/20, 3:49 PM

    Wait, git by default creates master branch.

    So if you push master to Github, how is this going to work ?

    Is it not better to make the changes to Git ?

    Ask Linus Torvald in Finland.

  • by anaphor on 6/14/20, 10:00 PM

    I don't think "main" is a good replacement because it loses the notion of it being a branch where the finalized and production ready code goes. It could just as easily mean "where we do all the work" (i.e. trunk based development, which I also dislike the name of), and I think that's potentially confusing to new people even more than "master" (although not as offensive to some people apparently).

    If I'm going to rename my default branch, it'll likely be "release" or "final" or something.

  • by jancsika on 6/14/20, 3:58 PM

    I'm surprised it wasn't called "main" given it was all C wizards who developed git in the first place.

  • by atarian on 6/14/20, 4:00 PM

    Well on the bright side, "main" is shorter to type than "master".

  • by circular_logic on 6/19/20, 4:28 PM

    Git being a cli and "main" being shorter to type might help motivate those that are not convinced by the histoial arguments.

  • by bzb3 on 6/14/20, 3:46 PM

    When they ask you what virtue signalling is, show them this.

  • by MichaelMoser123 on 6/14/20, 3:46 PM

    how are we going to call the master branch in git?

  • by runawaybottle on 6/14/20, 3:48 PM

    Let’s figure out the whole AD and BC year thing while we’re at it.

  • by qqj on 6/15/20, 8:01 AM

    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.

  • by doublesCs on 6/14/20, 3:49 PM

    .

  • by juanuys on 6/14/20, 3:48 PM

    trunk, anyone?

  • by waheoo on 6/14/20, 3:51 PM

    How is master in terms of git racially charged? (The article doesnt explain)

    Its the master copy/record.

    Its not the same as like the db master slave which i totally think needs looking at.

  • by quattrofan on 6/15/20, 7:55 AM

    Ridiculous. What exactly is this going to achieve? It's not like using the words with this meaning "celebrate" racism. For those like me who are liberals I can tell you this crap will guarantee populists like Trump continue to get into power.

  • by ykevinator on 6/14/20, 4:47 PM

    Flagged?

  • by haunter on 6/14/20, 4:23 PM

    git = "a foolish or worthless person"

    Wonder if some people want to push for a rename. I won't be surprised

  • by ulisesrmzroche on 6/14/20, 11:00 PM

    From a purely technical standpoint, maim is a way better fucking name than master. Why should I put up with a technically inferior solution just to accommodate their backwards opinion?

    Just a lot of bitching and moaning. Why are y’all so offended? What we call things matter, read Wittgenstein

    Anyone who is bitching about this doesn’t do shit to help With race relations in real life so why do people here give their opinion so much credence, besides this being a WASP nest