This is a tiny change that has no substantial negative effect on anyone’s life. If they’d renamed “pull requests” to “merge requests” no one would care, at all. Let’s please not make a big deal out of it.
sed -i 's/master/main/g' *
It set me back a moment the first time I saw it, and took me about 30 seconds to mentally internalise the change. After that first time, no issues as a reader of the code/config.
The historical usage of "master/slave" for the two drives on an IDE channel is a great example of the imprecise use of these terms -- it implies a relationship between the devices that doesn't exist at all. Both devices respond directly to commands from the host; the second device on the channel is not under the command of the first one.
Terms like master/slave or whitelist/blacklist are common parlance and this attempt to remove these phrases for less well understood phrases just seems like an attempt to whitewash history for little to no gain.
I'm a firm believer that language is dynamic and the meaning of words is the meanings we currently associate to them.
In my native language, we have something called "black notebook" which is essentially a blacklist. It has nothing to do with skin color, never been. It's more reference to bright and dark - it's a list of people you wouldn't do business with. It's very natural for people to use words from of their sensors. We call greenfield)brownfield in a similar manner.
This thread started as madsmith's valid comment that "that language is dynamic and the meaning of words is the meanings we currently associate to them" - how do we determine what meanings are associated with a given term? All indications are that it has a US origin, which provides the appropriate interpretation.
What is "the problem" and what should GitHub do to address the problem?
If the problem US-centric, and you think the US-only issues can be ignored because GitHub caters to a global market, then isn't your logic that GitHub should do nothing?
Switching from master to main is a good change.
The 'master-slave' terminology has been used in tech for a while (for example, IDE [0]). Yes, it's not intended to be a direct reference to slavery, but that's where the term originated and it's clearly used to mean "one thing is in charge, the other thing follows orders". Yes, there's no explicit 'slave' term in git, even though BitKeeper did (apparently - I've never used BitKeeper).
It's not effortless, but it's not hard to change from master to main ( [1] ).
Plus, it's a great excuse to learn (or sharpen) your grep/awk/sed/etc skills :)
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[0]: https://computer.howstuffworks.com/ide.htm#pt4
[1]: https://www.hanselman.com/blog/EasilyRenameYourGitDefaultBra...
Tell it to your students next time and let's all make a fuss about the use of the word.
Leader, for instance, implies a more fluid arrangement of the chain of command that better reflects what happens when a new machine takes over for a server that is having problems or being maintained.
If you're a minority and are tired of these word games instead of real change, make yourself heard. Let people know what you think of this pointless "diversity theater".
I am a minority in that I am left-handed. I have not yet discovered my minority powers but I'm sure they are growing and will make themselves clear to me one day so I can take my rightful place among the pantheon of minorities.
To be honest, I hope the opposite is true in that I do hope that the "diversity theatre" will be closed before that time, never to be opened again. Those who play in that theatre claim to support minorities but in fact all they do is drive people apart. It is as if their real purpose is to corral people into minority enclaves, to divide and conquer.
If we take this change out of the current context and let’s say someone suggested that a year ago, do you think it would get the same traction?
I also disagree that it’s especially political. It’s a small name change to be more considerate. The only reason this is “political” — and “merge requests” wouldn’t be — is that for some reason a small group of people are very loudly offended by it.
It's hardly surprising the priesthood of developers rally against any changes to their sacrosankt nonsensical namings. Merge is different from pull/push though.
Pull is literally an alias for fetch followed by merge. GitLab already calls them merge requests, which caused approximately zero drama, so we have empirical evidence that no one actually cares about these things when they can’t pretend to be offended by them.
All of this to give an appearance that social change is happening? Why not address the social issues head-on?
The change's symbolic significance vastly outweighs its immediate consequence, and naturally people will respond to it within the context it's been made.