Discussion on renaming master branch gets heated, then shut down

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23528154

by jansan • 6 years ago

33 53 6 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

The discussion about renaming "master" branches to "main" or "default" in git for windows to address issues with "non-inclusive naming" has become very heated. The vast majority of developers argued against the change, some very vocal.

This resulted in git for windows administrators to go full exclusive and shut down the discussion completely for non team members, block many users and delete or minimize a large number of tweets.

https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/issues/2674

The end of the thread looks like a massacre.

phakding• 6 years ago

As a rabid liberal, I think this is a stretch.

info781• 6 years ago

School master? Head master?

vr46• 6 years ago

They don’t use those terms anymore as I discovered when talking to a great friend who is very decorated by the establishment for being a “Head Teacher”.

verdverm• 6 years ago

Master of Ceremony, Master Switch, Gramdmaster

EForEndeavour2• 6 years ago

I honestly can see middle schoolers snickering at the fact that their school's authority figure is seriously and officially referred to as "head" teacher.

ch_sm• 6 years ago

I‘ve always found the term „master bedroom“ weird.

jayd165• 6 years ago

But its not master as in master/slave (which I assume is the concern?) There is no slave branch. Its master like main or premier. Like a master bedroom.

gimboland7• 6 years ago

Are you sure about that? I've seen a number of reports over the last few days that "master" in git is basically a holdover from BitKeeper which had master/slave repositories (and that in BitKeeper you use repos to "do" branching). I haven't looked into this in enough depth to convince myself either way, but I would do so before echoing your first sentence. Certainly a _lot_ of people are assuming it means "master copy" and has nothing to do with master/slave, but there do seem to be reasons to believe that's not actually historically true, i.e. a flawed assumption.

Edit: getting downvoted for pointing out something true; somebody's feeling uncomfortable...

jayd165• 6 years ago

You're right that I do not know the history. It might not be historically true but I would argue that's irrelevant to the conversation. (even as non relevant the conversation is to begin with!) Current perception is what matters.

Beyond that, seems like if it actually did refer to a master/slave architecture, it seems like there would be more reason to keep it describing what it is. Maybe the term invokes some violence but so does the kill command.

hckr_news• 6 years ago

Like a master bedroom

About that..

https://www.shoutoutuk.org/2020/01/16/master-bedroom-an-anti...

codegladiator• 6 years ago

I had actually started with "default", and was told it might be triggering for folks in financial trouble?

So now 'default' is out too ? This is absurd.

executive• 6 years ago

Trunk is out too, since people hunt elephants.

smitty1e2• 6 years ago

We need to reconsider using the Roman alphabet and English language at all, if Progress is to be achieved.

CREwert• 6 years ago

true, but elephants dont speak English.

karmakaze2• 6 years ago

What was wrong with 'main'?

doubleunplussed• 6 years ago

It's a very overloaded term. if someone says `master` I know they're talking about the git branch. If they say `main`, they could be talking about `main.c`, the `main()` function, or just using the regular English word 'main' as an adjective. `master` is very unambiguous due to not otherwise being a commonly used word in software. `trunk` or `mainline` would be better names than `main` for that reason (though mainline sometimes refers to specific people's master branches as with Linux, so that would unfortunately be colliding with that).

exabrial• 6 years ago

git master means "Mastering a skill", "Mastering a recording", or to "Master oneself".

Please no virtue-signalling crap like this. It's a harmful distraction.

gimboland7• 6 years ago

You sure about that? Might want to google "git bitkeeper master slave" before making up your mind.

ClumsyPilot• 6 years ago

The meaning should be assesed in today's context, not based on an obscure piece of software that existed decades ago, and most people have never heard of.

The person could be factually wrong, but in a cultural sence he is correct - the word has another meaning.

l1ska• 6 years ago

I don't get it, if it makes someone uncomfortable, why not change it. What difference does it make?

jayd165• 6 years ago

There's a ton of software that assumes the main branch is labeled master.

gimboland7• 6 years ago

That software is broken if it doesn't allow you to configure this (just as git does).

alexandercrohde• 6 years ago

Sounds like a non-story? I'm not sure what the value is in linking it here, other than to try to provoke a similarly controversial flare.

Etheryte• 6 years ago

That's over a 100 comments, many of them very calm and neutral, marked off-topic, over 10 people blocked, and then the whole discussion locked. I get that this is can be a heated discussion, but honestly most (although surely, not all) of those comments are about as neutral as it gets on this matter.

smitty1e2• 6 years ago

It's almost as though there were a prevailing orthodoxy, and dissent is so much CVS code.

Jetroid4• 6 years ago

Whilst in theory, I'm neutral to the change on ethical grounds, I think in practice it will make things very confusing.

Master/Slave is such an established pair of terms in tech that they have a loaded meaning as soon as you see them.

If I see 'Master' and 'Slave' on an old hard disk, I know what that is. If I see "Configure one device to the master setting and the rest to slave.", I get a understanding of the relationship for free.

I don't think we will get that with replacement terms, at least not in the short term, and we're just setting ourselves up for confusion.

zikzak2• 6 years ago

"Main" & "Secondary" has been proposed, enabling reusable interpretation of the remaining acronym labels for connecting.

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

gimboland7• 6 years ago

Right. And the fact that you don't find those terms offensive is part of your privilege. You're being invited to step outside of yourself and consider that for some people, it's not as clear-cut / apolitical as it is for you.

derision• 6 years ago

Every non-white person I've seen commenting on this change has expressed they couldn't care less and do not give a second thought to these naming conventions. Maybe we should let their voices be heard rather than continue to try to speak for them?

Jetroid4• 6 years ago

Maybe it is offending people, maybe it isn't. I hold no doubt that the concept or slavery is offensive, but I haven't actually seen an argument from a PoC saying that it offends them. Nobody alive today was a slave during the time that it was legal in USA/UK, etc. I'd hold a very different view if we were having this discussion in the 1800s. As I said, I haven't actually seen any significant outcry about this from the relevant communities, for lack of a better term.

My argument goes more along the lines that changing something like this can cause more harm than good in some cases, given that we have years of established documents using these definitions.

As an example from science, the reason that the direction of conventional current goes opposite to the flow of electrons is because we found out new information, but decided it was too costly to change.

If we remove the Master/Slave terminology from everything new effective today, then in 20 years, will a new developer know that 'Main/Secondary' in their 2021 datasheet is referring to the same thing as 'Master/Slave' from their 1991 datasheet?

Possibly, but also maybe not. A smart person could infer this and another could search it, but there is still potential for confusion.

renewiltord• 6 years ago

Who genuinely gives a shit. Name it whatever you want. The less important things are, the more people will discuss them.

zzo38computer2• 6 years ago

I think that there is no need to change these things. If you make a new version control system, then you can use whichever name you think is best (presumably whichever one is most descriptive, but not too long), but we need not change existing ones, nor change projects using them to use different names.

I personally don't use git, but the naming of the default branch has nothing to do with it. I use Fossil, which uses "trunk" as the name for the default branch. I don't know what reason they chose this, but I don't really care much; I just use that because it is the software I use (even if some people hate it, which I suppose is inevitable).

I also think that other terminology such as blacklist/whitelist, master/slave, etc need not be changed, unless the old terms are confusing or incorrect, which in some contexts there is the possibility that they might be. In some cases, such as motherboard vs mainboard, BC/AD vs BCE/CE, both sets of terms are in use so it is helpful to know them.

Political correctness has gone mad (although this is nothing new, really).

EForEndeavour2• 6 years ago

I use Fossil, which uses "trunk" as the name for the default branch. I don't know what reason they chose this, but I don't really care much

The "default branch" of a tree is a trunk, from which branches emerge.

sebazzz3• 6 years ago

Let me state first of all that I am fully aware of the fact that I do not know what it is like to be the target of (classic) racism. Nor will I deny that there are some things that are just not right.

However, where things go wrong in this discussion is the people who make complaining their profession. Surely you can think of some textbook examples of this. If you as a society conform to these people, the stock is not finished. Then there comes the next problem and the next, and so on and so forth.

Part of the population, often a minority, is very much in favor of this. Another part of the population feels attacked by this and will resist strongly. The rest will be somewhere in between, but what is almost always the case is that these kinds of discussions lead to divisions within society. Division is often accompanied by strong emotions and strong opinions, which in turn leads to hateful behavior against each other. That often expresses itself in racism.

And in principle that is not necessarily an insurmountable problem, provided there is enough interest in change. But there we come back to the point that many professional activists will never be good enough. Of course, it cannot be the case that all aspects of a culture and a country must be fully adapted. Certainly not at the expense of cohesion within society, with all the negative consequences that entails.

What you get now is that everything, irrelevant and unnecessary, that can be classified as politically correct, is allowed. In fact, a critical view of the whole situation is immediately perceived as incorrect and racist. You now have the choice of fully conforming to this politically correct thinking and action, or you may experience serious negative consequences. Then I am talking about dismissal or a completely destroyed reputation. If you are also a white person, the consequences are only greater.

And that is why I talked about classic racism in the beginning of my speech. Racism unfortunately also takes place the other way. A colored person may as well be a racist and a white person may as well be a victim of racism. What is completely ridiculous, however, is that there seem to be many people who believe that racism can exist exclusively with a colored person as its victim.

Anyway, what I mainly want to go to, is that we should take a critical look at abuses within our society, but certainly not lose sight of reality. We need to live together more and better and not just get further away from each other. That also means that you sometimes have to be able to say: "now it is enough", "this is going too far". And that you will not then be called Hitler.

If you tell your partner you love him or her every 10 minutes, it will lose value. It is no different in this matter.

And let's not forget that there is always someone who can take offense somewhere. Should we just adjust everything? (Of course people take offense again ...)

Note though that colored people are (much) more often victims of racism. Racism doesn't necessarily have to be words to someone.

I treat people the way they treat me. If I don't know them, I treat them the way I want to be treated. I have never (consciously) been guilty of racism.

What I take offense is that I cannot safely express my, quite subtle and nuanced, opinion on this topic. Not because my opinion is so radical, but because it is apparently not allowed to apply nuance at all and it only consists of right or wrong.

The fact that I am white also means that I can afford less in this discussion. And I experience that as discrimination and racism.

cyberprunes2• 6 years ago

I was inclined to agree until the choice to use the term "colored person". That's an obvious and well known racist trope with very recent historical ties to segregation. I'm not sure if it was a deliberate statement on political correctness but I really think it undermines your argument and makes it seem like a disingenuous crock of horse manure.

sebazzz3• 6 years ago

I'm sorry you feel offended by the term coloured person. I meant to say "everyone who is not white". In my country the words don't come over as hard but I see that this not the case in English language and foreign culture.

hbogert• 6 years ago

for me as a non-american, I have to say it's really a mine-field what word is offensive or not in this decade. Black was wrong in the nineties iirc, but's okay now. Colored, seems to have a connotation as well, which to a lot of foreigners is just arbitrariness.

The intolerance for non-american cultures who use other words, which might be controversial in america, is just baffling.

I was inclined to agree until the choice to use the term "colored person".

You are disqualifying a person from discussion while his intent and tone were pretty neutral (imo). If you don't see the irony of that, then god help us all (idomatic, bc I'm an atheist.)

cyberprunes2• 6 years ago

Whenever a white person claims reverse racism or discrimination and then brings to light what that instance entailed I have yet to find that it comes close to what a black person experiences as racism. (Maybe you are different) It may feel unfair to you but you just aren't going to get far on the white people experience racism too argument. It's a loser except among other white people with hurt feelings.

Discussion on renaming master branch gets heated, then shut down

Related Stories