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Comment by ominous | Hacker News Reader

The branch is now called "main" because the previous name "master" was found to be problematic due to historical racism / colonialism. And so it remains historical racism / colonialism the cause for the name of the default branch for newly-created repositories on Github.

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That's a really great observation! Ironic..

If you step around a nail sticking out of the ground, then the nail is the cause of you taking the path you take, yes. But the point is: you're no longer stepping on the nail.

It's not about erasing history. It's about the ongoing impact of blatantly referencing the notion of enslaving people.

The parent is pointing out is that what was once an oblique reference to human slavery is now being changed in explicit reference to human slavery

> is now being changed in explicit reference to human slavery

So? It's being changed to something that's no longer an oblique reference to human slavery. The fact that it's being done to because of that reference to human slavery is the entire point, not a mark against it.

Is it really ao blatant though? Is the word master ever been used to refer to a slave owner?

EDIT: ever been used to refer to anything other than a slave owner?

Yes. As a first example, I give you the default name for a git repository up to October 2020, on github. It wasn't used to mean "a slave owner".

And a second random example here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastering_(audio)

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