Lolz! GitHub did not change any branch names - they only changed the default help text file that suggested a command you can use to initialize a new repository.. that's it...

If someones existing repo changed their own branch name then it was the decision of that repo owner.. not related to anything GitHub did - technically if you see what's happening, Github barely did anything for this change..

A bunch of repos followed suit. It's related to what GitHub did because GH led by example.

I don't really care; I fixed the scripts. The question was if there was any impact, and not if the impact was onerous.

Agree, it's a pain.. but, then it's more of a responsibility of those repos and how they communicate to their users and your paying attention to it's changes.. I mean tomorrow they'll probably break more of your stuff by their changes not related to this change at all... Says more about their handling of their product changes than anything else..

Assuming branch names don't change on a package you don't control seems like the real issue?

Until recently the base branch of git repositories was fairly stable. Coming from a long history of revision control systems where the base branch was incredibly stable.