this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2023
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master (n): an original from which copies can be made
Context is pretty important when it comes to words with multiple definitions. I find it hard to interpret the "master branch" as anything but this definition. Now if you're talking about PATA hard drives, I can understand updating the standard terminology there.
yeah we might know what a 'slave drive' is but it sure sounds sketchy lol
Right, or the relationship between an i^2^c host and a connected device. A blanket ban that doesn't consider context completely misses the entire point.
Thats not the only definition though. It's clearly the intended one, but it's possible to make someone think of other definitions when a word pops up.
And it's not too hard to go "Oh, I get why alternate definitions might make people uncomfortable, even if I have no issue with it." And if you can see why someone might be uncomfortable in a situation, and it's zero effort to avoid that situation... why not?
Unless you're intentionally trying to not understand, or lack empathy and genuinely can't understand why words with alternate definitions heavily linked to slavery might make people uncomfortable, it feels pretty self explanatory.
I'll give Linus a pass, because linux kernel is probably the most widely accessed repo out there, and changing defaults and standards can have an actual impact on third party tooling.
It usually isn't, though. Going against a standard causes extra work. If it's an existing project that already used that "bad word" then you're proposing a major piece of work to change things around, likely breaking a ton of stuff in the process.
The meaning is exceedingly clear. Mindless actions ignoring context completely miss the entire point of the exercise, serving only to waste people's time with virtue signaling.
I in no way oppose changing the standard from "master" to "main" for new repositories, but going back and trying to change things with unknown dependencies is just going to cause more problems than it solves.
I don't know the history of who started the master/main debate. if it was a bunch of white people trying to show how progressive they were while black programmers were like "yeah, we don't care", then it's virtue signaling. If it was the black programmers being like "this phrase feels weird to us... can we change it?" .. then it's not virtue signalling, it's listening to underrepresented voices. I legitimately don't know which scenario it is. I'm also not in a position where the word bothers me at all, but I also have an easy life, and if someone tells me a word used in a certain way feels weird and I can resolve that with 0 effort (ie, switch new projects to main), I will.
And of course about the retroactive changing, which is why I said I wouldn't expect linux to change.
I mean when you look at the inclusion of slave being used in the same context it’s not so clear.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master/slave_(technology)
There aren't "slave branches" though. Yeah, there are places where master/slave terminology exists in computing but git branches aren't one. Full disclosure, I prefer main personally just because it is less characters lol.
There were such a thing as slave branches, though; not in git itself, but git was modeled after (and inherited the term ‘master’ from) bitkeeper, which had ‘master’ and ‘slave’ repositories.
I’m not sure that’s super relevant or important, these days, but, it feels worth getting the history right. The term ‘master’ as used in git can be traced directly to a master/slave usage, not a ‘master copy’ usage.
Good point, I stand corrected then! That makes it trickier to talk about because it could just as easily mean the other usage of master now while still historically being master/slave.
I genuinely can’t understand why words with alternate definitions linked to slavery might make people uncomfortable. It unintentionally reminds you bad things in history, and? Should we stop using words like "Nazi" or "War" too? Can we all stop using "death" while we're at it? It reminds me the mortal nature of human
@lowleveldata In general, I would say yes, it’s better not to use “Nazi” as a metaphor for otherwise everyday activities where there are plenty of unobjectionable alternatives.
I don’t know that trying to divorce it from context and find a general rule is particularly helpful, though. It’s not just “alternate” definitions, it’s the primary definition for most people that the industry adopted.
@lowleveldata I am fully aware that most who use it regularly probably have recontextualized it by default, but why not be more inclusive to those who might be put off by it when we have perfectly cromuoent another options?
Because that's a theory that could be applied to any words. We're catering to some imaginary person ("who might be put off") so it's basically devil's proof.
Because there are words that have less violent associations that can still capture the relationship sought to be described.
Those aren't used for computing though. And, yeah, I think if we did we probably should. Like if terms related to genocide were used for stopping a lot of processes at once that would be pretty weird to me.
Kill is used to refer to stopping processes and that's probably where the line is in my opinion. It feels very different to me to say "kill a process" versus "genocide a group of processes"
We do use
war. It's a common package in Java. Should we rename that because it might make people uncomfortable when we say "We are going to deploy the war tomorrow"? Why can't we just accept the fact that words have multiple meanings?I want to update the web app but war never changes.
hmm... have you tried nuking everything? That might help
No, because it is an abbreviation for web archive.
There's a project I'm following where an opcode called "SUICIDE" (which deleted the program it was triggered from) was renamed "SELFDESTRUCT" because people were bothered by the reference to self-harm. I personally considered it a waste of effort, but at least in that case it was really just a matter of changing some strings in the documentation and having compilers accept either label for it, since the opcode itself didn't change is value.
The opcode is likely to be entirely deprecated soon anyway, which IMO makes it even more of a waste of time. Oh well.
I agree. changing it on linux would have so many cascading effects, disrupting a ton of projects. But changing the default branch name on a brand new repo means its new and impacts no one. 🤷
If you accept the opinion of people that take your words out of context in order to get offended, somebody somewhere will have a problem with every word you can pick in a dictionary to use.
It's a power play. The people insisting on the change want to exploit the people doing things so that they gain some perceived or real reward. Stop supporting this.
The issue is that no one is taking my words out of context to get offended. No one is getting offended because I said things. They are getting offended because of their own situation, that I just happened to have brought up. If someone in the military had PTSD because someone yelled "Duck!" and then a grenade blew up right near them, so now they have panic attacks anytime they hear someone loudly say duck. That isn't them "taking the word duck out of context" that is "the word duck affects their brain differently." No one is saying that using the word master makes you a mean malicious person. No one is accusing you of being on the attack trying to hurt people when you use a word without realizing how it impacts others. If a military vet was like "hey I have severe anxiety when someone says duck, can we say 'leave early' instead of 'duck out early'". I would be like "oh shit, i didnt realize. my bad, yeah, of course" not "YOURE TAKING MY WORDS OUT OF CONTEXT I HAVE THE RIGHT TO USE THOSE WORDS". If you know the word hurts others and then you double down and insist on using it, then yeah, you're on the attack because clearly you don't care that you are hurting people.
It's pretty easy to tell a good faith argument most of the time. You don't need to just blindly accept the opinion of all people. "Hey this word is heavily associated with slavery and makes people think of slavery" is pretty striaghtforward. Thats not a purely bad faith argument.
I don't know all who you think is "insisting" on the "master/main" change. Everyone I've talked to has been like "yeah, if we could that's cool." or likened it to more of a "its like if someone reminded you daily of that time you accidentally called the teacher 'mom' ... having it go away would be nice, but if it doesn't oh well." No one is crying over it or making demands. The only "insisting" is just people questioning why the slight suggestion results in so much pushback.
It seems like your only reason to not change is "because someone asked me to and I'm too stubborn and reject any decision that wasn't my own." At least "changing a branch name on the worlds largest repo has consequences" is a valid reason. But "I refuse to listen to others"... cmon.
That would be a pretty ok argument, if you wasn't extending it to all of the internet. But you are, so it becomes "somebody somewhere on the world has a problem with your words, you should adjust or you are a bad person". And no, that form isn't reasonable.
It's also not reasonable if that person that has a problem with "duck" then comes back and say "yeah, and I have a problem with 'early' too", and you change early to something else, and they come back and say "yeah, we have a problem with 'of', can you stop that too?". And it just happens to be the same people raising a lot of other demands on a lot of other contexts, to the point that some people are just leaving the group to avoid them.
Yeah. people raising complaints in bad faith is a problem. If they say "I have a problem with 'early' too" and the reason is just "i dont like it". then sure. I'd agree this is a person being a problem. This is a phrase that is directly traceable to master/slave via bitkeeper. Its not just "someone is grasping at straws trying to be offended at random words that are completely unrelated". And things can get stuck in your head. You might think of this conversation every time you
git checkout mastergoing forward. So a person affected by slavery, thinking of slavery everytime a word about slavery is used feels pretty understandable. It's not completely upfront, so if things don't change it's not going to cause someone to change careers. This is a VERY low impact change. It's going to make 1% of people's life 0.1% better. It will also make 0% of people's life worse at all. It is a net benefit.A person with 3 legitimate complaints is not a problem. You gave an example of a person with 1 legitimate complaints and 2 random complaints.
To me, it sounds like you're saying "Black people complain about being oppressed too much, sure maybe they have some valid complaints, but the word doesn't bother ME so therefore this is just unfair whining." You don't see the severity of it, so therefore its not severe.
You seem pretty insistent on not wanting to change because you don't want to have to bend the knee and change just because someone told you to change. And I seem to think that this is a (very minor but nonzero) net benefit in the world, so the world gets better if we do it, not because we have to and someone is telling us to, but because why not. I don't think we're going to see eye to eye on this, so agree to disagree.
People get super defensive about every single word they say, like some single solitary slight substitution squarely suggests stifling someone's soul, striking substance seemingly senselessly. But it's not substance: it's simply a choice of word that some/many make without even really considering it. It's a non-issue that suddenly becomes a big damn problem suppressing people's freeze peach for no good reason I recall ever seeing.
"Hey, could you not say [word] [/so much] maybe? There are [better/other] choices" is apparently equivalent in personal offensiveness to "You're now Harold, a Scientologist whose favourite colour is green and your greatest dream/goal in life is to become a glider pilot."
Where it really becomes an issue is when they find it so offensive they decide to break things. For example, a function was added to the Debian Buildbot packages so that updating the packages would artificially fail if it detected the worker basedir was in the
slavesdirectory (which used to be the default). Forcing everyone using it to figure out what was wrong and move the directory. Because the Debian project apparently found a file path so offensive they had to ban it, even on your own private server.