In my view, it’s a bit more nuanced. In modern development at companies, most of the time trunk-based version management is used and having it called “main” makes sense, but earlier, when got was one of the few VCSs out there for open source development, I think master may have conveyed a different meaning. Generally, with the highly-distributed nature of systems like Linux, you need to know which remote and branch the version you are updating or referencing was mastered in for the remote you are submitting a patch to, for example. I think of it as coming from the term master copy—not because it has power over other branches but because it’s the canonical authoritative source for that remote.

It's master in the sense of master record (used in the recording industry) and isn't about power/control.

But thanks for supporting the people who ruined years of muscle memory for typing "git push origin master" over imagined and non-existent harms.

Sure it is better. But changing things comes with a cost. Tons of git tooling which could previously just ASSUME master was the primary branch must now figure out what the branch is, instead.

The amount of time people have spent on this change fixing broken tools and workflows makes it a stupid change all by itself.

This is exactly the problem. People who don't even fucking realize what the original term meant! And they want to change it! Ludicrous.

Why do people here have this complete sense of powerlessness about these issues?

90% of HN seem to think banning these words are at best silly, yet seem to be ambivalent about stopping it.

These aren't laws of nature other people just like you made these rules.

I note that "master (verb)" is on the list, but "mastery" is not.

So apparently a Stanford M.S., M.A. or M.F.A. degree may be said to denote mastery of a subject, but its holder cannot claim to have mastered the subject. So many ways to get it wrong...