The problem I have with this name change, and reasoning like this, is that there is no "slave" component of the master branch convention. There is no reference to slavery. My understanding is that it's taken from the way records are made, by using a "master" copy which is copied. Should that change?
Should all uses of the word "master" be changed? Is the main character of the Halo games a microaggression? Metallica's "Master of Puppets"? Is "master bedroom" a microaggression?
Like the author said, it just feels like a meaningless gesture so people can feel better about themselves without fixing any real issues.
> The problem I have with this name change, and reasoning like this, is that there is no "slave" component of the master branch convention. There is no reference to slavery.
It's apparently an indirect reference, because its taken from the master/slave usage in BitKeeper, even though there is no slave on the git context.
In any case, “main” is simply descriptive rather than either a not very apt metaphor or an out-of-context reference to another (also not very descriptive) metaphor, so it's an improvement independently of whether “master” had social problems on top of it's descriptive ones.
> It's apparently an indirect reference, because its taken from the master/slave usage in BitKeeper, even though there is no slave on the git context
The (likely) basis for the belief that BitKeeper use master/slave and git followed them, the GNOME mailing list post[0] that reignited this discussion in 2019, was retracted the next year[1].
I wrote a summary of the history[2] for Git Rev News, the git developers newsletter. In short, the usage didn't come from BitKeeper, and was intended to mean 'master copy'.
After the article was published, Aaron Kushner from BitKeeper reached out and gave me some more history on the usage of 'slave repository' in that one particular spot in BitKeeper[3]: it was a presentation for a client that was already using master/slave terminology and so the same terms were used in the presentation.
Should all uses of the word "master" be changed? Is the main character of the Halo games a microaggression? Metallica's "Master of Puppets"? Is "master bedroom" a microaggression?
Like the author said, it just feels like a meaningless gesture so people can feel better about themselves without fixing any real issues.