Re: Consensus on a new default branch name

From: Whinis <whinis@whinis.com>
Date: Jul 2, 2020, 23:08 UTC
Message-ID: <66d8c2fe-266c-f6b4-447c-bbe3eedc78ed@whinis.com>
In-Reply-To: <6998b083-fbdf-03e9-8633-d57123f1f0de@iee.email>

> The point there was that it was, at the time, a complaint that had a
> response which was passed into the community.

Right but as is the case here of a likely either malicious requests or an offhand comment leading to disproportionate response just as I believe this started due to a wallstreet journal article inflating a pair of terms used for over 100 years as racists simply due to being used.

> It's the *misuse* that's racist

Are you saying using the word master is racists? Are you aware of the origins of the term and how far back it goes? or that mister is also a mutation of the same word? Cause that a rather high bar to state considering its use not just in programing or engineering but also things such as master degree and master copy. Its also rather odd considering that suggestion that master alone is racists from what I can tell started only with this git issue.

> The original US case was with reference to the joint use of
> master-slave. That Jstor article may be behind a log-in wall, so I
> extracted from the essay, for immediate readers, some of the initial
> uses of that term pair in engineering.

That's fair, I have a university subscription and have seen that article a few times. Its ultimately a first pass article that someone could take further but should in no way be used as proof that this was the first use of this pair. Also the pair does not exists in this case so its a rather odd citation.

Show 5 quoted lines

> It's that Git is *distributed*, rather than a single central source of
> truth that old version control systems used. I remember the smell of
> blueprints, and of kaolin & linen master drawings (unique works of art,
> protected and valued). That has all gone. It now a case of validating
> the copy you have same hash. The chain of evidence has reversed.

Sure, how does that impact the use of the word master? its the branch name as in the branch, as described by the person that picked the name, of the master copy. Git being distributed has nothing todo with the branch

> Gits choice is only 15 years old.  There have been other changes to Git,
> and the forthcoming hash change is much more of an 'impacts everyone'
> change. Any direction of travel always includes some changes, generally
> for the better.

Framing moving large sections of words out of use that have been in common use for at least 100 years in a technical sense and has no racial connection or common racial usage seems a rather odd thing to consider progress. I would view people developing non-existent connections between words just as the snopes articles showed is a step backwards and shows a lack of education on words. If you first thought with seeing a word is how can it offend someone it might be difficult to work around. If anything you are inflating problems that don't actually exists.

-Whinis