Re: [PATCH v2] am: counteract gender bias

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jul 8, 2016, 21:39 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqfurjlshz.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <ceb80e45d1f02b71cc5ad2d7ded04360c530a9a8.1467962234.git.johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>

Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de> writes:

> Since d1c5f2a (Add git-am, applymbox replacement., 2005-10-07), i.e. for
> almost 11 years already, we used a male form to describe "the other
> tree".

This actually is older than that commit by 9 commits. I may have said it already, but it originates at 47f0b6d5 (Fall back to three-way merge when applying a patch., 2005-10-06).

Show 8 quoted lines

> While most likely unintended, this gave the erroneous impression as if
> the Git developers thought of users as male, and were unaware of the
> important role in software development played by female actors such as
> Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper and Margaret Hamilton. In fact, the first
> professional software developers were all female.
>
> Let's change those unfortunate references to the gender neutral "their
> tree".

I'd add this at the end.

	Doing so would also make the fallback_merge_recursive(),
	which is an oddball, more in line with the other parts of
	the system where we contrast what we have vs what we obtain
	from others with "ours" vs "theirs".  This inconsistency was
	also unintended.

I do not think changing these references to "her" and keep them like so for 11 years is a proper way to show "respect" anyway, by the way, so this round is a definite improvement over that version.

Thanks.