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I am right there with you. The whole idea of "master" is not really based on the idea of slavery focused master.

Master represents the final version of a component or software which ends up in production. It is the same meaning as an audio master (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastering_(audio))

If the word master is considered evil, then what would happen to a Master Degree ? or Dojo Master ? Words have different meanings in different context, let's focus on changing language that changes the way you think.

This is the danger of simply declaring a word "bad". You get all sorts of edge cases like this. This is like an automotive web site trying to prevent people from talking about retarding your ignition timing to prevent detonation. Sometimes words simply mean different things in different contexts.

This is not even an edge case. At this point in history, the slavery-related meaning is the edge case.

Looking forward to the 'mega-debtor' degree tier.

How dare you. People in debt should not be discriminated against you insensitive clod!

Platinum degree is a far more neutral term! Wait... No, my PC adviser has just informed me it is unethical to discriminate on the inherent values of precious metal...

Are you...

Excuse me, I did not mean to discriminate as to suggest there is a tier of metals of a higher desirability or intrinsic value than any of the other metals. All metals should be valued for what they are, and our language with regard to degrees should reflect that.

Therefore, the formerly oppressive Master's degree shall henceforth be known as the Bachelor's+1 and some research degree...

Wait...

No, I'm sorry. I've just been informed that due to the Bachelor's degreebeing based on a 12th century term, Knight bachelor, which implied a knight too poor or lowly to gather men...er... People! People under their own banner banner... We'll have to go with the Second Degree and Third Degree's respectively... Oh God, burn victims now? Gods above, wait, monotheists? I mean God... Wait... Then the polytheists, deists, and atheists.... Uhhhhh...

The Orwellian linguistic engineering rabbit hole is a deep and terrifying place it behooves no one to muck with. One can keep the line of those insulted going all day.

I however, have work to get back to doing.

This joke ends with "comrade".

joking what about master of puppets?

>And my impression was that the usage was more similar to "master copy" than "master of the plantation".

Evidently, this is a relic from bitkeeper which uses the "master/slave" terminology.

https://github.com/bitkeeper-scm/bitkeeper/blob/master/doc/H...

https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2019-May/...

I was somewhat aware of Bitkeeper, but crucially,

1. There are no slave branches.

2. "My impression" was my impression as someone new to git. I'm extrapolating other people, but I think it's fair to say that many (most?) people won't make the connection to chattel slavery.

3. Git is not directly modelled off Bitkeeper.

But like I said, I don't object to people changing the name, but more to people thinking changing the name is important.

No this is not a relic from bitkeeper. Why dont you ask the dev responsible instead of some random on a mailing list stringing assumptions to fit a narrative.

https://mobile.twitter.com/xpasky/status/1272280760280637441

> That said, this is slightly ridiculous.

Which makes it actively harmful: Anything you do which is even somewhat ridiculous can be seized upon by your political enemies and turned into ammunition against you. They can claim your whole movement is about the ridiculous thing, and use it to derail discussions: "Yes, yes, that point is good, but did you know they renamed something in a piece of software just because it vaguely reminded someone of slavery? Time to talk about that now!"

Remember that we're talking about Microsoft here. We don't need to give them the benefit of the doubt. They've already shown by the actions over and over and over what kind of corporation they are.

They’re surely notorious for their past business practices like EEE, but I don’t recall them actively trying to stir up racial conflict.

I agree with you. The thing is that GitHub has EXPLICITLY stated that they will not break their operations with ICE. So they are doing "good press" work rather than doing actual support of BLM.

It is when corporations have embraced and monetized counterculture. As if they are part of us but if analyzed by psychologists corporation was an individual was denoted a psychopath, that is why motions like this make me cringe and die a little on inside a little.

I feel the same way, and it’s depressing that people have to risk their reputation over this. If this was about people waving confederate flags or holding Nazi banners, we should do our best to keep those people out because these are symbols of ill intent used to send a clear message of hate towards minorities. But I have never seen people use the noun “master” as a symbol to spread hate. Moreover, I don’t think many people have even thought of slavery when referring to “master” in CS context before it was brought up in this manner.

But all this aside, this would’ve been a no-brainer if renaming the default branch didn’t have other real-world consequences. If it has a possible chance of making people happy, we should by all means do so. However, the proposed change is inevitably going to break many scripts out there that manipulate git repositories and forces additional work for countless people all over the industry. At this point, I think it’s reasonable to rethink whether this is actually going to improve the lives of anyone at all before proceeding.

"Moreover, I don’t think many people have even thought of slavery when referring to “master” in CS context before it was brought up in this manner."

That's probably true, and it's probably people who didn't have grandparents that were slaves. It's closer in mind to some more than others. And if we want to have CS be more open to the black community, then being sensitive to how words can turn people off is important.

Banning the use of a common noun is distractive and inflammatory while doing nothing at all to address the real issues. What are we going to do when the whole software industry is done wasting countless man-hours of work renaming git branches? Ban the use of the word "order" because that too might remind someone of slavery? This is just an endless rabbit hole that leads us nowhere. Why not we just address racial inequality directly?

>That said, this is slightly ridiculous. Have customers seriously complained about the term "master"? And my impression was that the usage was more similar to "master copy" than "master of the plantation".

We have solved poverty, work ethics problems in IT, we have great working culture, great salaries, we put demands and employers just throw money and resources at us. We run out of real problems to solve, so as humans - problem solving and pattern matching machines - we found another problem to solve.

Exactly. Is MC Hammer going to change his name too? I don't think so.

EDIT: in case anyone's confused: MC = Master of Ceremonies

I don't think it's because people are offended at the use of the word master, in this case. I think, that it's symbolic. By making a point of getting rid of the word master, you're showing that black lives matter.

Are we going to get rid of every word that a plantation owner ever used to insult the slaves? For words that specifically have no purpose other than conveying hate, I can understand stamping them out. But master has quite a few other meanings, most of which I would think existed before institutionalized slavery of black people existed. Seems a bit unproductive to target it. They had supervisors - should we stop using the word supervisor? What about boss? Or plantation? Could not the entire BDSM culture be considered in the same way, with its themes of bondage and servitude? Somehow I doubt that every time a sub asks a dom to crack a whip over their head they are celebrating slavery. How close does a word have to be to an issue relative to its other usages in order to be considered a symbol of that issue above all else?

I don't think "Let's reframe problematic work language in terms of kink-culture" is the slam-dunk rhetorical move you think it is.

It wasn't intended to be. It's an actual question - where does the cutoff point lie for something standing on its own vs it being considered a problematic and irredeemable symbol of an atrocity and how do we define it? How do we differentiate between when someone is an asshole or not?

I came across an example of this the other day after seeing the word used in a historical text for a class [0,1]. I was fairly certain it did not mean what it sounded like it meant so I looked into it. While the word does not have a definition associated with slavery (that I know of) and is thus arguably further away from the issue than the word master, its phonetics are enough for its usage to result in condemnation.

Lives can be ruined, either from an accusation over a misunderstanding or a failure to recognize actual harmful intent. Vagueness creates friction. To solve a problem there needs be a thorough and precise understanding, and when it involves multiple people there also needs to be a sufficiently common definition.

[0]: http://www.americanyawp.com/reader/16-capital-and-labor/will...

[1]: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Controversies_about_the_word_nig...

They are hardly related. Will you be removing my master's degree next?

Oh that's the same thing. That indicates mastery over the material you studied. Knowledge has become subservient to you.

What about the master copy of a recording? That's what git's master is anyways.

I completely agree. My prior comment was a joke.

Depeche Mode - Master and Servant is next

What about all other races that are discriminated against or people that are bullied? Do those matter?

Please don't bring up tired tropes like that one here. It's never going to change, so we're only going to get a tedious flamewar out of it, which indeed you've been perpetuating downthread—which, please don't.

It's not as if we lack for new things to discuss and argue about.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The terminology of master/slave architecture is a direct reference to the working relationships between people on an antebellum plantation. Names should help you understand what things do, and those names do. We also have node that elect leaders, nodes that get fenced, nodes with parents and children, etc...

The terminology of our software architecture, and of our software in general, mirrors that of the real world relationships that they model, reference, or are inspired by. That's a good thing. It helps us understand these systems. It's also true that if this terminology references something we don't like in the real world, we're free to change it. After all, master/slave architecture isn't a perfect modeling of a plantation, it's substantially abstract from that. There are many other relationships in the real world which could be used to describe this architecture.

Terminology is effective when it's stable, so we should be conservative about changing it, but that doesn't mean we should never change it.

Master in git doesn’t (as far as I understand) refer to master/slave architecture though. It’s a “master” as in as in the version from which copies are derived.

Your understanding is correct.

https://twitter.com/xpasky/status/1272280760280637441