• RichardDegenne@lemmy.zip
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    2 days 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?

    • Sibshops@lemmy.myserv.one
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      22 hours ago

      I feel master as in “master copy” is sort of problematic too. Git has no concept of “master” as a “master copy”. All the clones and forks are the same fidelity as the original. It’s a hold over from source control which did have an authoritative repo like SVN/CVS.

    • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day 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
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        1 day 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.

      • 1rre@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 day 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
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          19 hours 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?

        • LwL@lemmy.world
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          21 hours 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).