
GitHub to replace “master” with alternative term to avoid slavery references - mindfreeze
https://www.zdnet.com/article/github-to-replace-master-with-alternative-term-to-avoid-slavery-references/
======
NobodyNada
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23500093](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23500093)

------
Seb-C
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.

~~~
eeh
> 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.

Yes, slavery has been around for a long time in many countries, but that
doesn't mean we shouldn't try to improve our terminology.

> 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.

This vocabulary hasn't been forbidden. The word is still used, it's just not
used re Github.

That said, I consider Github's proposed change to be virtue signaling. Was
anybody actually upset at this, or are changes being made just because they
can be?

Update: Let me know who disagrees with what. I've disagreed with points made
on both sides, so maybe that guarantees ire?

------
derefr
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.

~~~
jacksnipe
It’s not. It comes from master/slave, and I’m desperately trying to find the
mailing-list email where someone (I wanna say on a BSD mailing list, but it
could be anything tbh) traces the etymology backwards through different VCS
branches until we get to one where the concepts are clearly “master/slave”. If
anybody has the link handy I’d really appreciate it.

~~~
fhars
This mail discusses some of the origins
[https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-
list/2019-May/...](https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-
list/2019-May/msg00066.html)

It argues that git‘s master branch is most likely directly derived from the
master and slave repository concept in bitkeeper.

------
exabrial
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.

~~~
weeboid
Even incremental progress is progress. And sometimes, incremental progress can
happen at such an obtuse angle that it becomes completely unmergeable back to
`main`. But you can always point to the spirit of the branch.

~~~
cs02rm0
I'm not sure this is incremental progress.

If we rename the branches beyond Github's UI lots of things will break. And
will it really affect racist attitudes even marginally? I can't see it myself.
In which case, rather than progress, it's a distraction from anything that
otherwise could afford real progress.

~~~
exabrial
^ exactly my point. It's a distraction.

------
lucb1e
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.

------
idiocratic
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.

~~~
villasv
That's a false dichotomy. You can worry about politics and other "essential"
debates, and still worry about language and better defaults. It's low-
gain/low-effort, but that's not really a reason to object.

------
mirthflat83
> but also terms like "blacklist" and "whitelist" for "allow list" and
> "deny/exclude list."

Seriously?

~~~
lallysingh
Without the racist background, how does one know which list does which? The
new names actually describe what they do.

The reason it may seem ridiculous is that racism is very, very deep in
American culture. The country's culture goes back hundreds of years and is
still slowly working on being less so.

Here's an example:
[https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/05/11/310708342...](https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/05/11/310708342/recall-
that-ice-cream-truck-song-we-have-unpleasant-news-for-you)

~~~
Erlich_Bachman
> Without the racist background, how does one know which list does which?

By basic knowledge of the English language. Terms like "black market", "black
death", "black tuesday", etc. etc. By the expressions like "looking at things
in black and white". It is a part of language, it has nothing to do with race.
These colors are used in the same way in other languages of other countries
that don't even have racial slavery history.

What is your example supposed to prove? That there were in fact some racist
songs? How does that make the whole American culture "racist"? If there is a
song saying something bad about males in general, does that make the whole
culture of that whole country anti-male for some reason?

~~~
tchaffee
It sure was convenient that both "black" in English and "niger" in Latin meant
"evil" during times of dehumanizing and enslaving others based on the color of
their skin.

Basic knowledge of the English language also shows us that the word black does
have to do with race. It means something for sure to black people.

The word black is both a personal identity around race, and it is often used
to mean "evil" or "bad" in the modern workplace. While "white" is used to mean
"good" in the workplace: whitelist. And white is also a race. I would hope
that just about anyone can see why moving away from using black to mean "evil"
in the workplace and moving to using _more accurate_ words like denylist is
not just easy, it would also make the workplace feel intentionally more
welcoming to our black colleagues.

~~~
qbaqbaqba
It's really funny how you fail to realize that "slave" comes from "Slav".

~~~
tchaffee
I'll add that to my list of reasons for removing master/slave from technical
terminology. Thank you.

~~~
sinity
Are you a Slav?

Because I am, and _I did not ask for this_. Find me _one_ Slav who requested
this.

And yet, you _thinking_ about the word association is all it took to imagine
you you're _helping someone_ with that. Because, hypothetically, there might
be someone who is offended. For some reason.

Who thought about renaming master? As far as I know, a white person. Somehow,
all these fuckups are started by white people in the US on behalf of
minorities. I can imagine how it went:

"master branch... hmm, where does this naming convention come from anyway?
Maybe master/slave? Hm, _slavery is bad_. That means the term master here
might possibly offend someone. Welp, let's change it then! Oh, and it'd also
excuse my job role of Dev Relations. I'm definitively useful!"

Or an academic in very-soft sciences instead of Dev Relations. I just saw some
Dev Relations people on Twitter being _very srs_ about this crap.

Meanwhile, all the software is broken. Feeling like it's held together by duct
tape. Consuming more and more resources as time goes on, while functionality
decreases.

All of this is excused by talking about programmer time. "Programmer time is
more valuable".

Yeah, so valuable we'll be wasting time on this crap. And some things will
break, maybe. Some will be fixed, some not. Some manual/help resources will be
left in their original, __horribly racist __form. Some will be rewritten.

Oh, and there's the little cost of making politics just _a tiny bit more_
toxic.

Anyway: when I learned the term for my ethnicity is basically the same word as
slave, I thought "Hmm, that's interesting/cool fact" I'm pretty sure all the
people react this way if at all.

I don't believe Blacks in the US are as unreasonable as you all paint them. I
think you're all pretty damn racist for implying otherwise.

------
zabdmyP
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).

~~~
TrowthePlow
Isn't the American Express "Black" card the top of the heap too?

~~~
olivierva
Although the color of the card is black the official name is Centurion

------
tawaymastergit
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.

------
overgard
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.

~~~
GuB-42
Branch names have no meaning on git. "master" is just the default name for the
initial branch when you create a repository using "git create".

Github just wants to change it to "main". It won't change existing
repositories and you can rename it to anything you want afterwards, including
"master".

~~~
g_b
Actually master is used as the default for submodules branch tracking [1]. I
maintain a Git client application that deals with submodules & I have to take
this use-case into account.

GitHub must work with Git & make this a proper change if they want to do this.
Change the submodules specification as well.

[1] [https://git-
scm.com/docs/gitmodules#Documentation/gitmodules...](https://git-
scm.com/docs/gitmodules#Documentation/gitmodules.txt-submoduleltnamegtbranch)

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

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

~~~
ColanR
I remember as a kid running into that terminology for the first time, as it
related to HDDs connected to a motherboard. Didn't like it at first, still
strikes me the wrong way, but does seem like the best terminology for the
paradigm.

~~~
derefr
It’s a slightly wrong-headed connotation for drives, in that the metaphor just
doesn’t fit well: something called a “slave” should probably be something
unwilling, but _forced_ by the master to obey; rather than something that
follows the master willingly, or something that takes its cue as to its role
from an external third party (i.e. you, the system integrator setting the DIP
switches on the drives.)

If you’re already willing to use metaphorical terms with unsettling
connotations for things just because they’re fitting, then a more precise pair
of terms for the setup on a drive cable would be “dominant” and “submissive”!
(It’s not like we don’t already use “dominant” metaphorically in tons of dry
ways, e.g.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominance_(genetics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominance_\(genetics\))
and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominator_(graph_theory)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominator_\(graph_theory\)).
We tend to avoid “submissive”, though, and that’s a shame; “voluntarily
relinquishing control” is a very useful concept to get across in a single
word.)

------
gdsdfe
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.

------
xixixao
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).

~~~
xixixao
And on the original issue it's good to point out that there were millions of
slaves throughout human history who were not black... That doesn't make the
concept any better, but it hasn't been historically a racial issue (people
were enslaved because of a difference in religion, place they lived in
regardless of ethnicity or solely social status).

------
emiraga
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"

------
baryphonic
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."

~~~
Shish2k
> The word "master" is overloaded

Overloading of words is no longer allowed. See also: people can’t refer to
their non-binary gender as “NB” because that means "non-black” in the context
of race; polyamarous people can’t refer to their relationship style as “poly”
because that is stealing the word from the Polynesians; etc :P

------
waheoo
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.

~~~
brenschluss
[https://twitter.com/tobie/status/1270290278029631489?s=21](https://twitter.com/tobie/status/1270290278029631489?s=21)

~~~
tgv
First: that's just stringing assumptions together.

But etymology doesn't matter. If it would, "negro" wouldn't be a word to
avoid. Actual use would matter, but the context doesn't seem to warrant that.

~~~
brenschluss
Etymology matters if enough people think it matters. Language has meaning that
is social, and if enough people dislike a meaning or see a word a different
way, that word will change its meaning.

So right now we are watching words change meaning.

~~~
waheoo
One dude? on twitter is enough people to change the meaning of the word?

And that has something to do with explaining the long string of assumptions
that nobody is willing to address?

~~~
waheoo
Well, the dev responsible addressed.

[https://mobile.twitter.com/xpasky/status/1272280760280637441](https://mobile.twitter.com/xpasky/status/1272280760280637441)

Woops.

------
anjc
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?

~~~
eplanit
I guess remastering audio recordings and movies is out now, too.

------
temporama1
Good one. Nearly had me for a moment.

------
mnm1
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.

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

So, what's the difference?

~~~
jb0x168
Maybe direct that question to someone who's dealt with the effects of systemic
racism their whole life, you might find the answer enlightening.

~~~
orthecreedence
I'd direct the question instead to all the white people who have no idea what
the black experience is yet seem to have no problem editing the language on
PoC's behalf so they can feel like they're "doing something" while PoC's
freedoms and lives are being eviscerated by our justice system.

------
villasv
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.

~~~
moosterv
That's my thought as well. I'm willing to change the terms I use if it makes
this industry even a little bit more inclusive.

------
sand_castles
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.

~~~
ironmagma
Git isn’t a great role model, however. It still uses the “blame” terminology
which ascribes a needlessly negative and confrontational tone whenever you
need to tell someone how you discovered the author of a line of code from your
team’s codebase. This kind of vocabulary debt is something we should be paying
off more of, more regularly, since it’s just as important — arguably more
important — than functionality.

------
anaphor
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.

~~~
Klonoar
I just use "trunk" as my root branch.

I remain astounded that nobody seems to want to use this, when there's already
existing architectural practices surrounding it.

~~~
orthecreedence
Has anybody thought about how "trunk" might make elephant coders feel?

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

~~~
jb0x168
"Trunk" fits the branching metaphor better, but I think "main" will be easier
to uptake (autocomplete, muscle memory, etc).

I feel the same way about "denylist" versus "blocklist". "Denylist" is more
precise, but I think "blocklist" would make for an easier transition.

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

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

------
bzb3
When they ask you what virtue signalling is, show them this.

~~~
there_the_and
It's not. This is more like a swear word. No one would expect that calling it
the "fuck" branch would be OK. Just because more people are OK with "master"
doesn't change the fact that it bothers other people who are just trying to
code. This isn't hard to understand.

~~~
cs02rm0
Master isn't a swear word. This isn't hard to understand.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Not a swear word, exactly, but some find it genuinely offensive.

------
quattrofan
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.

------
MichaelMoser123
how are we going to call the master branch in git?

~~~
moosterv
main? trunk? origin? so many possibilities!

~~~
hawski
Origin already has a specific meaning in the git nomenclature.

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

~~~
thinkharderdev
They've been effectively replaced in academic literature at least with BCE
(Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era)

------
qqj
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.

------
doublesCs
.

~~~
haspoken
The text on this page shows as the color black.

------
juanuys
trunk, anyone?

------
ykevinator
Flagged?

------
haunter
git = "a foolish or worthless person"

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

------
ulisesrmzroche
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

