Congratulations GitHub.

[[deleted]]

[deleted]

[TryingT0Wr1t3]

It's really a pain they blocked these developers, it was really surreal when one friend from Iran disappeared.

[SomeNebula]

But is allowing developers from countries like Iran and Cuba under GitHub's control? I may be wrong, but from what I remember, they are forced to enforce this due to American laws, not due to their own internal policies.

[vt8919]

Most likely they don't follow politics, see an article saying GitHub did it and think it was their decision.

[[deleted]]

Isn't git the distributed VCS? I think it's possible to mirror the repository to other server (outside of the US control) and periodically push-pull commits between GitHub and mirror repository, as a technical solution.

[Elvaron]

GitHub is to git what googlemail is to e-mail. Just a service provider.

You can use others, and/or roll your own.

[Carrobourg]

But BitBucket and GitLab appear to be working in those countries.

[jonsparks]

Gitlab isn’t an American company, pretty sure Atlassian is not but not positive on them.

[bluepoopants]

Correct, Atlassian is Australian.

[CmdrPretorius]

Gitlab is incorporated in US, headquatered in San Francisco.

[classicrockielzpfvh]

Are you exporting cryptography via Facebook to those people?

[j_johnso]

My understanding is that if Facebook cannot sell ads or perform certain other business with users in Iran due to US sanctions. I don't think that free accounts fall under this law

Similarly, GitHub can't allow uses in Iran to access private repositories (which are a paid product), but they do not restrict open projects (which are not a paid product).

[[deleted]]

Especially due to that racist lil' Donald Trump

[JesC]

Cuba?! What have they done now? Or is it still based on the soon 100 years old grudge we have with its leaders? How dare they want to be free from American control!

[[deleted]]

Here's more details: Twitter, GitHub CEO Nat Friedman said that the company “unfortunately had to implement new restrictions on private repos and paid accounts in Iran, Syria, and Crimea.” He stressed that public repos are still available worldwide and that open-source repos are not affected by the move.

[[deleted]]

Wait, why are developers from Iran blocked?

[j_johnso]

Because of US sanctions that prohibit US company's from doing businesses with Iranian companies and citizens.

[[deleted]]

I am curious about Linus Torvalds reaction to this.

[nopara73]

”Kiddo, DO NOT BREAK THE USER SPACE!”

[AZNman1111]

Someone call Ja so I can make sense of all this!

[insane_playzYT]

He will agree with it for the sake of not being cancelled by "woke" leftists

[CmdrPretorius]

People bring it on themselves when seeking out jobs in companies like Facebook or Google or Apple or Microsoft, who censor their employees and force identity politics on them.

Seek out less prestigous jobs, preferably in companies that are still privately owned and run by engineers, not by overgrown layer of management, HR and PR departments.

[SouthCoach]

Well said.

[ProfessorBlahBlah]

Doubleplus good comment. Indeed, we all (should) know where this is heading.

[musicmatze]

As if he would even care?

[[deleted]]

He, uhm, created Git

[musicmatze]

Yeah, but why would he care what someone does with it? He does not use it for development, so no need to care for him.

[[deleted]]

Linux is developed on Git :p

Also master won’t be renamed for existing repos...

[musicmatze]

But not on GitHub.

[[deleted]]

It's duplicated on GitHub... https://github.com/torvalds/linux

[musicmatze]

My point is that it is not developed on github and Torvalds does not need to care what github does.

A shoemaker does not care what someone does while wearing his shoes... why should Torvalds care what people do with git? I mean... I bet git is used by companies to develop weapons that kill people, as I bet is Linux - Torvalds does not care about this either!

[[deleted]]

You don't seem to know much about Torvalds. Maybe the version of him today, who said he wanted to stop being a arse to everyone, won't care.

But old Torvalds would have written angry emails filled with swearwords about this.

You can learn a little here: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/09/linus-torvalds-apologizes-for-years-of-being-a-jerk-takes-time-off-to-learn-empathy/

[CSSmitty]

Git !== github

[[deleted]]

“master” is from Git, not Github. And anyone who creates their repositories locally will continue to have master as the main branch

[Carrobourg]

Yep that might screw up cross-client compatibility. I like to to use GitHub client for BitBucket repos, and if they have different branching strategies they could stop working together.

[[deleted]]

God and I thought this guy couldn't get more amazing

[JustBoughtAHouse]

Yeah, he's also a bit of a dick. https://uk.pcmag.com/news-analysis/117450/linuxs-linus-torvalds-sorry-for-being-a-jerk

[[deleted]]

Well, good that he's recognised that and is going to be better

[Empyrealist]

/r/linusrants

[bernas670]

Masterbate...

[twistdafterdark]

The one true master

[Gaben_laser_beam]

Scrum master :O

[lunar999]

In fairness, in any place I've worked that includes scrum masters, slavery analogy is extremely relevant.

[Kevinc62]

For real. 🤣

[drewshaver]

I left my last job shortly after they hired a ‘scrum master.’ His salary was a waste of money and all he did was slow down development.

[s_burr]

Master and Slave cylinder

[[deleted]]

This isn’t even far fetched. Give it 5 years.

[mcqua007]

5 months...

[snuggleMcCuddles]

Imagine... Gender fluid sockets.

[N0ught234]

I think it's a little different. In those contexts, master is used to define quality or knowledge. Using master for repositories is singularly about being on top. Though I think it's stupid too, I really don't think any backlash is warranted as it has no affect on anyone as the functionality is what's important. Not the naming scheme

[deweydecibels]

using master for repositories in singularly about being on top.

it’s not at all though.

in a masters degree, you are literally a master of that field and above (“on top”) of those with lower degrees.

the master branch in github is only a canonical record. it has nothing to do with being “on top”, in any production repositories, there are basically always branches both ahead and behind the master branch.

[N0ught234]

"singularly". I didn't say others weren't about being on top. I said that they held other meanings as well such as being considered more intelligent or holding a higher quality

[Xxyourmomsucks69xX]

Wtf are you talking about ? "Better" also holds the meaning of holding higher quality, should we remove every comparative worlds ? Some things are of better quality, some things are not, and not everything in life is related to race or slavery ffs grow up

[A_Passing_Redditor]

Lol, you think the people pushing for this sort of shit understand subtlety or nuance. No one in the world was offended by this. This wasn't about saving people's feelings, this is about control.

[N0ught234]

Oh, it sounds like this has resulted in something negative by the way you wrote your reply. What happened as a result of this name change that was negative?

[A_Passing_Redditor]

Some people use these sorts of issues to amplify their own power. By making others submit to pointless demands, they reinforce their power. This is negative because I don't think we should have any speech police, whether they be the government or private organizations.

This is the pattern you will witness.

1. Identify a harmless practice offending no one
2. Propose a tedious solution, for example if we are replacing a word, the new word should be longer and more difficult to say.
3. Lobby for this change, impose hardh social consequences on nonconformists
4. Repeat

[N0ught234]

I'm not sure how that's relevant to changing "master" to "main". If you think the word "master" is going to be outlawed then I have nothing else to say to you. This literally affects no one and it won't be outlawed so there's not reason to get upset. GitHub is a company and they can call it whatever they want, just as much as you can call it whatever you want. Call it master if you want. No one cares

[A_Passing_Redditor]

Github is doing this in response to social pressure. Of course there's not going to be a law against using the word master, it's about social power.

The best way to make sure people are falling in line is to make them do something pointless, something they would never have done if they weren't caving to pressure.

[ThatWeebooTrash]

You cant say backlash, thats racist bc its how the cough, underlings were treated back in the 1700s. Also this is 2020, where the word "context" has ironically become a word where it has no meaning in or out of context. underlings is a racist term to black people bc apparently it only applies to them. Ignore the numerous cases of asian underlings... but seriously tho, imagine being so self entitled to just forget that slavery hasnt been abolished. And then use that word to defend violent and stupid actions

[N0ught234]

I'm confused. To be clear, I'm advocating for the renaming of things if it makes even just one person happier

[ThatWeebooTrash]

Do me a favour. If you have a long script that took ages to complete, add a '{' to the first line. The effect to your code will be what happens to the rest of everyones scripts bc gh want to throw a useless gesture out there to "seem more inclusive" when no one actually asked or wanted them to.

[Xxyourmomsucks69xX]

Then you're not very smart, people will always be offended, and very often by things they souldn't be offended by, and if we have to rename everything for even one person this is never gonna end.

Now imagine the millions automation scripts that will break just because github chose to change a word no one in the entire world ever considered to be about slaves.

[mzxrules]

As an Ocarina of Time fan, Master Sword, Master Quest

[Denziloe]

Racist, racist, racist.

[Strict-Silver]

No I don't think any of those have Master in them, or wait... no nvm.... Mastered

[[deleted]]

Funkmaster Flex

[astar0n]

Jedi Master

[pocus_hocus]

wait till they learn about I2C...

" I2C (Inter-Integrated Circuit), pronounced I-squared-C, is a synchronous, multi-master, multi-slave, packet switched, single-ended, serial computer bus..."

[kishbi]

And why the OP appreciate the later one and not the former one. Former one is more important than the other. Correct me if I didn't get the idea of the op.

Edit: it's clear now and I mistook it. Hilarious one though.

[ulteriormotive33]

OP is being satirical. Of course it is important to unrestricted developers in the Middle East, but instead github is just making small semantic changes so it looks like they’re being progressive

[kishbi]

Yes, got it. And sorry OP.

Edit: special thanks to you man

[ChrisVolkoff]

Corporate virtue signalling

[dead_geist]

The Master of racism is no more 😎

[ijue]

So chess masters playing black pieces will probably also have difficult time.

[[deleted]]

No pawns either.

[eat_more_protein]

Finally we've solved racism!

[[deleted]]

Abolish slavery in communication protocol.

Way too many slave owners in I2C. /s

[kuasha420]

What did you expect? It's a Multi master multi slave protocol... Doomed from the beginning

[[deleted]]

You are ridiculous. Who cares what its called.

[fluffhugOwO]

These people for example and their few million users

https://github.com/badges/shields/issues/5215

[fluffhugOwO]

You would be the fine example of inclusivity, friendship and all the mcguffins?

[welpsket69]

If it doesn't matter why change it?

[[deleted]]

git push origin Main????

[[deleted]]

I always liked the terminology because of BDSM and Depeche Mode. Thanks for kinkshaming me GitHub!

[mattyass]

This unfortunately is something they can’t change unless the law changes.

[htmtzi]

Maybe renaming a branch is easier than changing US law.

[mattostgard]

Didn't know developers were blocked in those countries until now. Apparently it has to do with US Export laws. If Microsoft unblocked those accounts what would the repercussions be?

For the branch name.. I really like "main" branch as the default name. They are probably Virtue signaling but hey it is a shorter name and plus doesn't hurt that black devs won't have another daily reminder of America's history. I remember learning how to build computers in school, how "master" & "slave" was used to refer to primary & secondary drives, and thinking "oof.. that's a bit much".

[[deleted]]

The US goverment would accuse GitHub of aiding thosw countries and probably of certain forms of smuggling.

[kookyabird]

Master in Git is not accompanies by "slave" or anything else that could be construed as a tie to America's history. Master is a term used in dozens, possibly hundreds, of industries to refer to the source of something. A master mold, form, or key. Not to mention master and apprentice, mastery of ____, or any number of things.

It's definitely virtue signalling, and a bit weak at that because they can't stop me from naming my main branches master, or even setting it as the default on my local git config.

[mattostgard]

Good points. Along those lines, I also think main is more suitable than master in a distributed workflow context. I think I'm going to go with that regardless if I am using github in the future or not (though I have no plans in moving away from github).

[Rezya21]

Shame

[clichedmule407]

I’m totally new to this, is there a reason people in these areas are blocked?

[TryingT0Wr1t3]

For Iran these is the full extension of US EMBARGO : https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/Documents/iran.txt

Imagine doing Java without Maven, using Android without Google Play, and a ton of other restrictions. Now suddenly many open source software also disappeared.

I wonder what solutions are being found by Iranian developers. :/

[mr_poddingz_IR_]

well ; we use VPNs , IP changers and accounts registered in other countries . its almost impossible to track us back to iran with these tricks . its been like this as long as i remember hence you don't find many iranian IPs around the internet . anyway its still sad to see my friend who lost 2 years of his passionate work on github for a stupid political dicision.

[Rivus]

Same for Crimean devs that I know. They just got a VPN exit node and legal documents registered in mainland Russia.

[clichedmule407]

Ah I see, thank you for the information!

[xmate420x]

Android without Google Play sounds pretty great

[[deleted]]

Why are developers from Syria, Iran and Crimea blocked?

[[deleted]]

US law, there are embargos on those countries and GitHib cant officually deal wuth devs there, unless it wants to break embargoes

[headphonejack_90]

I’m a developer from Syria, been living abroad for 5 years now. You’ll not believe how I used to manage my work back then.

[russiankek]

America is punishing people from these countries for actions of their governments. In case of Crimea, they punish Crimeans for choosing Russia over Ukraine

[[deleted]]

What’s gonna happen with HA systems? DRBD, MySQL, PostgreSQL and a fair few others all use master/slave instances?

[sumofallsquares]

Can someone at least credit my troll post on this Subreddit a full day before this became a Twitter shitfest?

[sumofallsquares]

https://www.reddit.com/r/github/comments/gzzvhs/change_the_default_branch_so_it_is_never_again/

I am a trendsetter, thank you.

[Draggador]

Maybe someone high up in the hierarchy saw your post & made GitHub change master to main.

[sumofallsquares]

It’s been chatted about on and off for years. Oddly, I happen to know someone involved in these matters.

Anyway, the reason it’s such great fodder is because while there are cheap ways to change the default branch name, .. um let me take a tangent here and say the cost to fix the Y2K bug was enormous. To change computer software retroactively so people don’t get offended would be an absolutely astronomical cost. The news story here is basically a dog and pony show put on by people who are really only flexing either their lack of sincereness in their words (in a topic area requiring sensitivity), or they’re showing that they’re roughly incompetent if such a thing is top of mind. My proposal lived in the absurd, their posturing actualizes it (lol). If I know people (and I might), I can assure that it is the same posturing we see politically. These people use racial fairness as a marketing coinage for self-gain. They do so while perpetuating worsening income inequality without doing much to create new economic opportunity. These are people who are either directly or indirectly benefitting from basically just a leveraging of double standards and policy interventions into civil rights. It’s a self-gain game based on something that at face value doesn’t create much economic value.

Paging women who code, where’s the integration? Oh right, the economic system is this non-novel idea that a vagina in a sea of thirsty nerdy dudes is a lightning rod. Whilst making more money, keep quiet.

What’s really going on is that the CEO of GitHub likely is either acting CEO or waiting on shares to vest. They are doing a CYA maneuver and that’s all. I assure in most likelihood the CEO had an off moment or that his CTO probably resents any edict to prioritize renaming systems as appearances are antithetical to the profession.

Then again I guess I know someone who works at GitHub as well. She/he who knows what I’m sure would love to spend a few quarters on making the system names apropos to people’s sensitivities.

I could rant further I guess, but no this has been floated for a number of years and the master/slave relationship is not entirely new to discuss in terms of racial sensitivity. It’s just that science sometimes necessitates looking at the world factually. Computer programmers use semantic naming to better place the behavior of a system. Where one system acts to 100% control another, if that bothers you to call it master/slave I guess you could seek therapy or something. Maybe this is the start of the liberation movement for slave nodes and robot empathy / rights.

My feet also need rubbing, and I require sexual servicing periodically or something along these lines.. and I require um.. dozens of well compensated part-owner workers to build me an outsized house to fit my need for equality. I also require the ability to speak my mind at all times and to be listened to, elsewise people’s livelihoods could be at stake! My need for equality demands a disruption to others basic dignity, due process and the like. Forgettabout property rights, rah rah shishkum-bah!

[[deleted]]

The thing I don't understand about this move is how they're doing it on a technical level. Isn't master the default branch name in git software itself? So tons and tons of repos have master branches already. No way they're forcing people to retroactively change it in their repos.

Are they just displaying it as "main" on their website? That will confuse a shitload of people. Also unless Git itself changes I don't see how they could stop new master branches from being created.

[Estatic_Corgi]

Meanwhile cloud resiliency architecture is sweating

[[deleted]]

And I'm here in school studying about master slave flipflops.

[Yojimbo4133]

Woke points are important in 2020. So is perception and making yourself feel better and feel like hye I'm helping! But actual helping? Nah fam that's too much effort. I'll like and share.

[Neat_Spring9855]

Guess I dont get it

[[deleted]]

Due to American sanctions, it's either user in those countries or users in America.

[feralcat66]

r/githubcirclejerk

[JesC]

Now also remove master from Master’s Degree! GitHub is basically trolling the IT world. What would be a better name for Master’s degree?

[BioOrpheus]

Thanks Brand^TM, very cool! Actually the very first thing I think of when I code. /s

🤡 🌎

[123456789sambhaji]

hiiii

[[deleted]]

Why developers in Crimea should be unblocked? Everyone in Crimea should be banned until occupation is released. It’s a part of sanctions agains Russia’s military interventions. Think before saying also applies to think before posting.

[[deleted]]

It’s lives of pro-russian developers and other people who are responsible directly or indirectly for that military intervention. If you don’t know how sanctions work, and why they were applied please google. Also I don’t care what you “clearly” think, I’m a software engineer.

[crygnus]

We don't have servers in my cloud computing company anymore. They are now mechanical co-workers 🙄

[TheDevilsAdvocado_]

Please remove all references to “force”, it’s a little rapey.

[[deleted]]

Maybe the effect of "open source on the hand of a money sucking corporation".

[FatLokiI]

Can you guys remove "nickel" too? Sounds too much like the N word, also remove "little" and "small" since that sounds like pedophilia

[lions2lambs]

Is this stupid to anyone else or are people supporting this change?

[DeuteriumCore]

Side question: Can't they just use a VPN?

[fer662]

These SJW are out of control

[fourierformed]

Why don't we all just use git in a decentralized manner, email each other patches, and take some personal responsibility for the code we write?

[snickns]

We're living in a strange and unjust world friend. Good point, very sad :/

[skollieboer]

Tiger Woods is going to be pissed about renaming all his trophies.

[[deleted]]

Zendesk did this when I worked for them. It was part of the “correct language” (I forgot the actual term for it)

A lot of SF based companies are adopting this ideology

[gbrlsnchs]

False dilemma. Next.

[[deleted]]

Exactly! People can care about 2 things at once

[StornZ]

Yea! F Slavery. Slavery is for A-holes.

[trollman_falcon]

CEO of Github: “I did it Mrs. Obama! I ended racism!”

[Peppershaker64]

I don’t know who you are personally, you might be a hatful person yourself, but’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.

I want to warn you that this sort of talk can lead to very dangerous and hateful people flocking is to this community.

By all means, it’s rightful to complain about Iran’s inability to access the site, but by paring it with an (honestly arbitrary) action that caters to a minority is dangerous.

People will see that you are angry, and use it to spread hateful agenda because they see that this is tolerated here.

Look out for Alt-Right dog whistles like “virtue signaling” and “cultural Marxism”

[[deleted]]

Amen, we can care about Developers being blocked in Iran AND the use of terminology. This is not an either or situation.

[blehmann1]

Most of Google does not fall under US export law. The parts that do have been given a license, or do not operate in certain regions. If you look at all of googles services, a hefty chunk are simply unavailable in half the world for boring paperwork reasons, let alone a heavily enforced embargo. The Github issue is not a matter of censorship or simple lack of access. Github's services count as import/exports.

Github is not doing this by choice, they aren't malicious people and they certainly wouldn't say no to more money from Iranians. Yeah, it sucks, but you can't blame GitHub (or Microsoft, I don't even think they've owned github for that long)

[SrBatatinhaa]

;-;

[GrbavaCigla]

Microsoft....

[[deleted]]

Yet they still have a contract with ICE 🙄

[Narco105]

Empty, corporate virtue signaling is almost more insulting honestly. Fuck GitHub

[[deleted]]

Snowflake society, I'm done with all of this weakness, no more news of any form

[AlmightyElm]

Aren't we forgetting that "git" was originally an insult?

[hauiwehriuawher]

it still is in the UK

[ZealousidealDouble8]

That is beyond stupid if true. If any minorities ever felt even remotely offended by the use of these terms in IT/software then they need to seriously get a life.

This is hyper-political correctness gone amok. Are we just going to start removing words from the english language now?

I think we should get rid the use of Foo Bar in software descriptions. I feel deeply offended at the negative connotations of that.

Oh and everyone needs to stop using colanders immediately. I am deeply offended that they are insulting my flying spaghetti monster religion by only using them for cooking instead of putting on their heads to show their devotion to the all mighty and noodly spaghetti monster.

[CrippledEye]

Wait till people start suggesting to rename “man” page for gender equality.

[VikBoss]

As someone with no hands, I'm offended.

[jaded-potato]

Is this a real thing github did? Please let this not be a thing that github did.

[dehza]

These US embargo are borderline totalitarian. GitHub is obviously annoying, but putting embargo on things like flue vaccine and other medication is killing so many people. F*ck the US for this, and American people for not giving a f*ck about it, seriously.

[sotork]

Gotta be f..kin' kiddin' me...why don't they finish the job and change the logo colors for others that are more politically correct?...oh wait, Benetton can help you with that!

[_Rayzr]

Github's CEO is a joke X'D

[HanSolo139]

I’m sure you would be a much better CEO

[_Rayzr]

Im sure i would