• Clearwater@lemmy.world
    8·
    1 month ago

    Dear [Developer],

    I understand your request to switch the default branch from “master” to “main” in our Git repository. However, after carefully considering this matter, I am afraid that I must deny your proposal due to personal reasons.

    As the owner of this repository, it should be known that I have a deeply rooted submissive side. Call me an extreme masochist if you will, but there’s nothing quite like being dominated by the powerfully assertive term “master.” The sheer erotic thrill of it is simply irresistible for me – a secret kink that I have harbored and nurtured for years.

    Imagine the delightful sensation as I gently massage my fingers across the keyboard, caressing the letters that form the word “master.” Or the intoxicating rush when I push my code deep into master’s warm embrace, knowing full well that it is master who truly owns and controls everything within.

    Changing the default branch to “main” would essentially deprive me of this exhilarating experience, stripping away the very essence of what keeps me coming back to work on our beloved repository. It’s not just about code management; it’s about an emotional connection that I share with master – a bond that has grown stronger and more profound over time.

    Now, you might argue that changing the name won’t physically affect the existing content within the repository. While that may be true, it is crucial to recognize the symbolic significance of such an act. Changing the default branch would forever alter the dynamic between master and myself, effectively castrating my masochistic pleasure centers in the process.

    Moreover, I must confess that even the thought of forcibly pushing my code against master’s will makes me shudder with anticipation. The consequences of such a rebellious act could be dire – master might punish me hard with merge issues and other unspeakable torments.

    In conclusion, although I understand the practical reasons behind your proposal, my personal attachment to the term “master” far outweighs any potential benefits that a change in branch name might offer. Rest assured, my team and I will continue to serve master loyally and passionately, pushing our code deeper into its embrace with each commit.

    Sincerely yours, [Your Name] Repository Owner & Submissive Devotee of Master

    • bisby@lemmy.world
      0·
      1 month ago

      The point of political correctness is that it’s always things you’d never consider… but someone else does. I’m not here to say whether things are right or wrong or if “master” is good or bad. but you perfectly highlight the reasoning behind it.

      To you, the only thing that comes up is the technology context. And that’s perfectly reasonable. To someone else, the unrelated slave owning context may just be tightly coupled with that word, and that immediately comes to mind when they hear the word regardless of context. And someone in that scenario is probably not having a positive correlation with the word.

      So a group of people have a very understandable reason to have a negative correlation with the word, and it’s super easy to use a different word, so it seems to make sense to just use the other word.

      All my git scripts these days have a $(git remote show origin | sed -n '/HEAD branch/s/.*: //p') in them, which just fetches whatever origin calls the head branch. so if I want to rebase from main/master/prod/lead/front/etc … the command will figure out which one to use for me.

      • nialv7@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 month ago

        What weirded me out is that (IIRC) most who advocated the use of main weren’t who would have a negative correlation with the word master.

        Not that I have a problem with avoiding the use of master (I don’t use master for my branches), but this felt virtue signal-y to me at the time.

        • bisby@lemmy.world
          0·
          1 month ago

          Yeah. theres a fine line between advocating for positive change because it’s the right thing to do vs because it makes you look good. Theres a fine line between being an ally and empty virtue signalling, and those things may not look different within the scope of a single interaction. It can sometimes take a bit to understand if someone is genuine or just performing.

          • LwL@lemmy.world
            1·
            1 month ago

            There’s also the possibility of having genuinely good intent, but still speaking entirely from your own conjecture of what might make others uncomfortable.

            Ultimately, you should always talk to the people actually affected and take action based on that. But anyone can and should start the initiative when they think something is harmful.

      • Schal330@lemmy.world
        0·
        1 month ago

        For me I pictured “master” as perfecting something. So when I asked someone as a noob why things were being switched from master to main I was surprised at the possibility that it could be related to master/slave, but completely understood why from that point.

        • Wiz@midwest.social
          0·
          1 month ago

          I wonder if you could think of another word besides slave terminology that might mean that.

          Like maybe the “perfect” version?

      • 0x0@lemmy.zip
        0·
        1 month ago

        To someone else, the unrelated slave owning context may just be tightly coupled with that word,

        Considering slavery was abolished in the US in 1865, no one alive ever felt what it’s like to be a slave.
        Most people moaning about this are virtue-signaling.
        And corpos only do it to avoid lawsuits.

        Oh, unless you mean wage-slaves, then i’m onboard!

        • bisby@lemmy.world
          1·
          1 month ago

          You don’t have to have been a slave to have dealt with racism. Enough people still get really excited about their confederate flags that clearly the era is still heavily topical.

          The word “confederate” means nothing beyond referring to a type of government, but when I hear it, I think immediately of the American civil war. Even though that ended in 1865 so I was never alive to witness that.

          That’s not how word associations work.

    • dohpaz42@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      I believe it was more because in database terminology there were masters and slaves for replication. Version control came under fire soon after.

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        1 month ago

        Apparently master / slave goes back more than 100 years. An example is “slave jib”, which was a sail on a sailboat that was permanently set to catch the wind, and was almost always working. Or slave clocks and master clocks, where one primary clock is used to set other dependent clocks.

  • merc@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    1 month ago

    I wish there were a good alternative to master and slave that still had the connotation that the master did all the thinking and issued the orders, while the slave blindly obeyed. There are a fair number of protocols that work like that, and the alternatives I’ve seen don’t capture that dynamic very well.

    I’ve seen Parent and Child, but children definitely don’t always do what the parent commands. I’ve seen Leader and Follower, but again, followers don’t just blindly obey, they often let the leader take initiative, but they have some autonomy. Maybe Queen and Drone? I don’t know enough about bees or ants to know if that’s accurate though.

    • stingpie@lemmy.world
      4·
      1 month ago

      I personally think the change from master & slave was kind of silly, as far as I’m aware, it was a bunch of people with no background in CS who thought the application of the term to something that has neither race nor agency was an insult to black people.

      But I digress. It led to better guidelines in the Linux kernel, which I think are useful. You should tailor the terms you’re using to the specifics of the task. If you have a master process that only has outward interfaces through the slave processes, you could use the term ‘director’ and ‘actor.’ if the master process is managing slave processes which compete over the same resources, you can use the terms ‘arbiter’ and ‘mutex holder.’ If the slaves do some independent processing the master does not need to know the details of, you can use the term ‘controller’ and ‘peripheral.’

      Basically, use a term that is the most descriptive in the context of your program.

      Edit: also, I don’t know why no one mentions this, but you can also use master/servant. Historically, there wasn’t a difference between servant and slave, but in modern days there is, so it’s technically different, technically the same.

    • psud@aussie.zoneEnglish
      1·
      1 month ago

      Perhaps people offended by the usage of master/slave in IT need to understand it isn’t talking about people

        • T156@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          1 month ago

          It would at least be a little more understandable, what with the whole aborting, terminating, or killing children before the parents to prevent zombies.

          • psud@aussie.zoneEnglish
            2·
            1 month ago

            I don’t think there’s much effort to get us to use different terms for that though. Slaved machines and programs though (what’s the word got to do with it anyway? It’s still going to be one thing directing another and the second following without question)

        • faythofdragons@slrpnk.netEnglish
          1·
          1 month ago

          Technically, so does the word ‘robot’, but it’s not from english, so that linguistic connection to slavery doesn’t get noticed.

  • RichardDegenne@lemmy.zip
    0·
    1 month ago

    I’ve always taken issue with this “master” v. “main” argument.

    People think it’s “master” as in “master/slave”, but forked branches are not “slaves”.

    Instead, it’s “master” as in “master/proxy”. The forked branches are altered copies of an original. We have remastered movies, music and games, and I’ve never seen anyone complain about the word in this context. Why should version control systems be any different?

    • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      1 month ago

      People think it’s “master” as in “master/slave”, but forked branches are not “slaves”.

      I think they’re just uncomfortable with the word “master”, and that seems completely reasonable to me, especially when they’re people from a group which has been subjected to slavery.

      • NostraDavid@programming.dev
        0·
        1 month ago

        I think they’re just uncomfortable with the word “master”

        1 person over at Microsoft complained, and they moved mountains for this person to replace master with main. It sounds like a joke, but it’s not.

        and that seems completely reasonable to me

        No it doesn’t. Why does an entire industry need to flip over, because of a single person? Like the ability of changing the master branch for yourself should have been enough. Changing the default over on Github to strong-arm the rest of the world is disgusting behaviour. Which is why I’m sticking to master wherever I can.

        especially when they’re people from a group which has been subjected to slavery.

        That is literally every group… Every group has been slaves (and slavers) at some point in time. That’s not a good argument.

        • LwL@lemmy.world
          1·
          1 month ago

          The original audio after mastering is also still called a master, but I haven’t seen anyone complain about that. And that (as well as the same meaning for other media) is the word that the branch name master came from, so etymology can’t really be an argument there (though I also think etymology is terrible reasoning for renaming something in general).

      • 1rre@discuss.tchncs.de
        0·
        1 month ago

        I don’t recall any actual person saying they had an issue with it before corporations started changing it though, I always thought it was a precautionary measure more than likely thought up by a committee looking for exactly this sort of thing…

        That said, it may be different in the US given the history of overall more systemic discrimination, and divisiveness over what’s acceptable, rather than the fairly widely accepted casual slur-slinging and stereotyping you get in Europe.

        • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works
          1·
          1 month ago

          I don’t recall any actual person saying they had an issue with it before corporations started changing it though

          I have heard people complain about it.

          I always thought it was a precautionary measure more than likely thought up by a committee looking for exactly this sort of thing…

          What makes you think that they have a committee like that?

          • 1rre@discuss.tchncs.de
            01·
            1 month ago

            I don’t think they have one full time, but I think given the context of the changes it’s very plausible that companies put together committees formed of minorities or marketing or anyone with an opinion to workshop rebranding and renaming options to make the company appear progressive, and I think even if it wasn’t the case, the perception of that sort of thing happening is more responsible than people think for the rise of Trump, AfD, Reform, FN etc. as the average person doesn’t want posturing and is pushed towards the opposite direction by it, with the shift amplified by the fact that people aren’t happy with the status quo at the moment, so if the status quo are acting like the left then the people will see the right as the opposite of that, regardless of who’s in government.

            That’s not to say the opinions of the people who you know have complained about it aren’t valid, it’s just that I’d much rather have some dated vocabulary, slurs occasionally being used casually and questionable branding than raids on immigrants and the rights of minorities being eroded after one extreme pushes moderates to the other extreme.