bisby

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 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. 🤷

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.