Comment by joshuamcginnis
6 days ago
Also, git's "master" branch is named after a master recording or master copy, the canonical original from which duplicates are made. There is literally no reason for it be offensive except for those who retroactively associate the word with slavery.
Nope, the term comes from bitkeeper which does refer to master/slave.
See this email for some references:
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2019-May/...
I'm fully on-board with not using master-slave terminology. I work in the embedded space where those terms were and still are frequently used, and I support not using them any more. But I've been using git pretty much since it was released and I've never heard anyone refer to a "slave repo" or "slave branch". It's always been local repo, local branch, etc. I fully believe these sorts of digital hermeneutics (e.g. using a 26-year-old mailing list post to "prove" something, when actual usage is completely different) drive division and strife, all because some people want to use it to acquire status/prestige.
I would have thought someone of such extensive life experience would be more comfortable with the uncovering of an unknown than to characterize it as "driving division and strife". It is undestandable to have a chip on your shoulder in the face of the ageism rooted within the tech industry, but my "digital hermaneutics" is simply a fact and not an attempt at toppling your "stats/prestige" of being a day-1 git user, there is no need to be defensive about it.
Does git use "slave?"
Then does simply performing a search on bitkeepers documents for "slave" then automatically imply any particular terminology "came from bitkeeper?"
Did they take it from bitkeeper because they prefer antiquated chattel slavery terminology? Is there any actual documents that show this /intention/?
Or did they take it because "master" without slave is easily recognizable as described above which accurately describes how it's _actually_ implemented in git.
Further git is distributed. Bitkeeper was not.
This is just time wasting silliness.
Does asking rhetorical questions count as effective argumentation?
If I do enough sealioning will my unsupported thesis be belived?
What about imposing my modern perspective into a chain of historical events to prove my own perspective?
Further, I'm going to use technical jargon to get around Occam's razor.
You seem very serious about this, I think wasting time on something silly could be good for you.
I'll change my default branches to main when Masterclass change their name to Mainclass
And mastering a subject is changed to maining it?
Yeah, with replica it made a little sense. Was still silly, but at least the official master/slave terminology actually didn't fully make sense either... So the replica rebrand felt justified to me.
With git it was basically entirely driven by SJW that felt empowered by people accepting the replica rebrand
imo the `main` thing was mostly driven by people trying to appease the social justice crowd without understanding much about the movement. Its a bit of woo in my mind because there are still systemic injustices out there that are left uncontested, and using main doesn't really contest anything substantial.
I don't really care what the default branch is called tho so I'm willing to play along.