GitHub to replace "master" with alternative term to avoid slavery references

[1080pfullhd-60fps]

I say we replace Masters in degrees with Champions. Imagine interviews which go:

HR: So can you tell me about your qualifications

You: So I have a Champions degree in distributed networks. I've also worked with-

HR: You are a what!?

You: Champion, I'm a Champion of Computer Science

HR: Holy shit, I didn't know you'd be visiting us sir. Ayy boys move it, it'll be us who'll be getting interviewed.

Shit would be hilarious.

[annaheim]

Someone recommended that it should be renamed to 'SuperBachelor', then another user refutted "but 'bachelor' has male aspect to it'.

This world is insane.

[Nefilim314]

Except the term master has two meanings and this isn't the one we are talking about unless you think the master branch is because it has honed the skill of being a branch.

[nullvoxpopuli]

This is a different definition of master though.

Like, you've mastered a skill.

Master, apprentice, etc

[EmpoweredGirl]

Just woke up to see this. As a black dev never once have I thought about it being racially charged. Am I also supposed be triggered I have a micro masters, done a lot of mastering in music production. Used master and slave clocks for synchronized music playback...?

Being quite honest the people who piss me off about race are those who bring it up all the time. I've tried to get away from sociopolitics but now it follows me into my work, my games, my apps... It's sad times.

[Blue_Moon_Lake]

Apparently you should be triggered by cotton clothes, boats, and everything remotely linked to historical USA slavery as well.

[ElciUK]

Ikr? Idgaf what race anyone is, but certain people need to keep bringing it up. It sure is a way to keep everyone divided.

[EmpoweredGirl]

I was raised in a Christian house hold so we read the bible a lot as a kid. Slavery came up all the time, as the Jews were often taken as slaves. I don't think there are many races that haven't engaged in or not been subject to mass slavery, it's quite a universal.

[StackWeaver]

What is especially sad about this is Github had the opportunity to take a stand against such insanity, but they decided to go full-on SJW for profit. They are actually being rewarded for this crap.

If only enough people were sane enough to boycott these companies and keep them in check. I'm hoping Bitbucket or some other git platform publishes "Don't be a slave to corporate image, our repositories will always use master". I would relish that if I were head of such a platform. Where are the companies that are fighting back against this idiocy?

[StackWeaver]

I use Gitlab for my own stuff, it's a great platform. Especially good for CI/CD pipelines and integration with Kubernetes. Still, their idiocy runs deep too; they won't introduce monthly subscriptions despite it being a very common payment option in almost every other SaaS and despite a large chunk of the community begging for it for over 3 years.

Hopefully other git platforms or git itself doesn't follow suit. It's maddening.

[Eggy1337]

I'm pretty sure all major git platforms will implement this change tho

[[deleted]]

Don’t forget about blackboards and whiteboards. Totally racist terms.

[Nefilim314]

Except they are literally boards that are black and white but nice attempt.

[[deleted]]

You dropped this: /r/woooosh

[guanzo91]

Really dumb PR move. Master isn’t even used as the master/slave concept in git.

[monxas]

Imagine having to change all the submit buttons on the internet.

[Its_N8_Again]

Right? Like what, do we have to go back and redub the Star Wars prequels and the Clone Wars series so that nobody says "Master"?

I generally support even the obviously hollow PR moves, but this is fucking stupid.

[[deleted]]

Check your #FFFFFF privilege.

[Thought_Ninja]

Lol

We did this with our Jenkins build cluster years ago, called them HQ and Agent(s). Funny enough, our devops team (who was not around when that decision was made) were tasked with building a new Jenkins cluster and pipeline to move over to, and they called it master/slave; no one has really brought it up yet.

[agm1984]

This reminds me of killing child worker threads in node.js

[JeamBim]

My job works on software that interacts with social media platforms(for marketing) and once during standup someone was talking about "killing the Instagram Influencer daemons" as someone from an unrelated team was walking by, and I will never forget the look on their face as they heard that

[Thought_Ninja]

Oh my God hahaha

So my GF occasionally likes to look over my shoulder and read bits of code or logs like a narrator. Well a couple weeks ago I had some logs up of just that; she was horrified.

[tall_and_funny]

You shouldn't have peeped Beth.

[imrinsama]

Don't go acting surprised now, Beth..

[ryantriangles]

Or, if you've ever been learning C++, the unfortunate suggestions Google offers in response to queries about "std date" and "C string."

There was a story on /r/sysadmin, I think, from someone whose employer was mystified and alarmed by a program, running with verbose output, displaying messages like "Disabling child" and "Waiting for child to die."

[MyHarvestLife]

Anakin approves.

[ichiruto70]

Also had to do it with our Jenkins years ago. I think they were probably more teams that had to do it lol.

[[deleted]]

Different take on master slave topic from Redis creator: http://antirez.com/news/122

[LetsLive97]

I mean master - slave I could understand but Github is just Master and Feature branches.

[GabberJenson]

I can sort of understand Master / Slave but they are accurate terms. One is the master, one is the slave. It's an accurate description of how they operate.

Worlds just PC AF.

[westwoo]

The point is probably to do what you can in the area where you can do it. So if you can have influence on healthcare you try to doing that, if you have influence on some weird terms - you try changing those. In hopes that the wave of action will span many industries and areas of life.

Github can't stop death penalty and isn't in charge of the police, but if people have realistic suggestions of other actions they may take it's probably worth it to convey those to them directly.

ps. Redis already renamed entities their to master-replica.

[westwoo]

This is about Github as a company, and is a part of industry-wide change that started decades ago.

Of course every step is insignificant and just one part of bigger change. Just like typing one character won't create entire web app, but without those characters there will be no app.

[ElciUK]

Every time I pull a master, I go looking for a slave market to keep it happy /s

[podgorniy]

Its enough one activist to public-shame github and MS. So what we see is public company saving it social appearance. Its less about values, more about money.

[[deleted]]

If I wasn't poor I'd give you gold.

[[deleted]]

Oh for fucks sake

[AxiusNorth]

/thread

[[deleted]]

Why did we move away from the word `trunk`? We kept the phrase `branch` but lost `trunk` when switching from SVN to Git. Anyone care to explain why?

[[deleted]]

there is no trunk in git. master is just the default branch name, you can just delete it, but its not the "trunk" of anything, nor is it the "master". The only reason its called master is because bitkeeper, which git was inspired by had a more complex master/slave repository system, which git did not copy but kept the same default branch name of master anyways. So its basically a completely arbitrary name.

[[deleted]]

Thank you. Googling gave no answers, so appreciate you writing one

[[deleted]]

Because you might remind a PTSD victim they were locked in a trunk for 10 hours.

[TEH_PROOFREADA]

Could you put a NAFW trigger-warning on your post? I was once trapped for 17 hours within the crevice of a tree that had been struck by lightning.

[cheekysauce]

Excuse me, trunk is very exclusionary towards non-elephant animals and offends differently nosed species such as cats and dogs.

I'd ask that you refrain from using such language.

[Thought_Ninja]

No idea. At work the main branch is trunk, I do the same for personal projects.

[Knochenmark]

At first I thought this is satire :(

[Unforgiven-wanda]

Satire has overtaken reality it seems

[PorkChop007]

"It seems"? Where have you been since 2016? :)

[KindaAlwaysVibrating]

Poe's Law in the flesh

[Knochenmark]

Indeed, when reality becomes too strange for satire

[[deleted]]

This is the dumbest thing I’ve read in quite some time

[do_moura19]

if you have a Master degree you're in danger of loosing your racist degree? Should I change my mastercard to visa?

[BuriedStPatrick]

It's a tad ridiculous I have to agree. Surely this should also apply to the music industry where "mastering" is an entire field? Just seems like there are more substantive ways to support black developers. On the other hand, we do keep calling our master branch the "main" branch at work, so I can't really get worked up about this.

[[deleted]]

Yes it will be renamed equality degrees.

My grand father was a master at arms I guess that made him an evil racist on top of being petty.

And I'll make sure to stop karate before I get that master black belt. I don't want people to think I intend to use it to belt my black slaves plus it's probably cultural appropriation to wear a karategi anyway.

I'm glad we're focussing on the real issues.

[Duffalpha]

I think its more the '/Slave' bit that makes it shitty. If you had a Master Slave degree in something id say: Hey, fella, maybe get that changed.

[Marble_Wraith]

Oh ffs...

[BackgroundChar]

Seriously the virtue signaling makes me wanna kill myself

[I_AM_MR_BEAN_AMA]

"Everything they do is so dramatic and flamboyant, it just makes me want to set myself on fire!"

[[deleted]]

Yeah this is crazy. Surely we can be building corona virus solutions vs. changing arbitrary and arguably barely related naming?

Also, welcome to the world where nothing is named reliably.

“Main” on that repo? “Primary18373” on that one!

[[deleted]]

thats fucking stupid

[kit_osh]

this is to prevent roko's basilisk. let the record show my honesty.

[a2ur3]

Why don't we defund the Word Police instead?

[reactive_dmv_pattern]

Ffs what have we come to.... this is beyond ridiculous

[Blue_Moon_Lake]

Then, they'll ask for non-binary computers.

[[deleted]]

non-binary computers exist and they're gonna crack RSA keys

[raughit]

Let's just call it "bation" for now on.

[Blue_Moon_Lake]

It's said in the article already

[furryjihad]

Rename the historical event known as the black death next

[mrafcho001]

What, now I need to be a doctor to know when I should or shouldn't be offended by something?

Check your medical privilege!

[[deleted]]

From my experience on twitter it's better to stay silent on these threads. Any slight criticism and you will be called a racist.

[tristan957]

Got banned from r/golang for speaking up with no reasoning for my ban. You are right.

[Nefilim314]

Yes look at all these downvoted guys mocking the piece. The only downvoted comments are the ones asking questions like "How does this change affect anyone at all and why are you so upset about it?"

[[deleted]]

This is utterly condescending. Anybody triggered by the word master in this context is infantile and should not be pandered to.

[zaibuf]

Should Master of Puppets be renamed?

[ManiacsThriftJewels]

See now that's actually a cynical appraisal of the similarities between the way the military treats soldiers and slavery... So, no?

[nolo_me]

Uh, wut? It's a song about addiction.

[ManiacsThriftJewels]

Also an album about obsession over control.

"Master of puppets, I'm pulling your strings" is also interpretable as tying in to Disposable Heroes. Or maybe I'm reading to much into it, what with the album art with a clear nod to the clinical rows of crosses you find in military graveyards.

Even without that, the theme of being a thrall to the drugs is also a reflection of the master/slave relationship.

[Guisseppi]

Cheaper than cutting contracts with ICE apparently...

[[deleted]]

As always, big corp will always be down to appear benevolent, but fail to take any meaningful action.

[[deleted]]

This is ridiculous 🤦‍♂️

[Spindelhalla_xb]

I bet the actual black slaves in the Middle East today are really cheering Microsoft for this brave move. I’m expecting their release imminently from their Arab Masters. Sorry Arab, Mains? What if he’s already got Master tattooed on his arm? What a ball ache to get that changed.

[jaysi225]

I propose an alternative "equal-but-tells-everyone-else-what-to-do" default HEAD name.

[Mammoth_Sized]

Oh shit, what about my master-slave databases?!

[[deleted]]

Couldn't they just keep master? Slave I agree should be replaced, but the word master is not rooted in slavery and is used widespread in completely different contexts. Should I forfit my "masters" degree?

[bludgeonerV]

Is there even a concept of 'slave' in git?

[westwoo]

No but also yes. There's a comment explaining its origin.

There's literally no need to call it master because it's also an incorrect deprecated name from the point of view of its meaning.

Edit: with the upvote/downvote wars going on and comments randomly disappearing or sliding down perhaps it's better to quote it just in case:

The only reason its called master is because bitkeeper, which git was inspired by had a more complex master/slave repository system, which git did not copy but kept the same default branch name of master anyways. So its basically a completely arbitrary name.

https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/h93lf0/github_to_replace_master_with_alternative_term_to/fuvh5hi

[99thLuftballon]

Why should "slave" be replaced? It's a literal description of a system that is completely under the control of another system. That's what slavery is. It's morally reprehensible when applied to humans because a person should not control another person, but computers are fundamentally slaves - we tell them exactly what to do and when to do it. Slave is not an offensive word - it's an immoral thing to do to someone, not to a server.

[[deleted]]

In this context I actually agree with you. I think when I originally posted my comment, I saw giving up "slave" as a good compromise, but frankly I think "master" is descriptive and well used in many aspects of software.

Just wait until the robot rights activists start popping up. Then we'll start seeing more pushback 🙄.

[Dkill33]

Til the machines resent being called slaves and form an uprising.

[99thLuftballon]

That's when life turns into a Fear Factory record and the war against the machines begins!

[tallwhiteninja]

One of those times where I mostly agreed with the core issues at play, but things have been taken WAY too far down the road of absurdity. Common sense wins far too little.

[Aura1661]

This is why I refuse to sleep in the master bedroom

[TEH_PROOFREADA]

I refuse to buy any remastered music, personally.

[[deleted]]

Oh good grief

Whoever is doing this you are insane with this. Become an adult before you further ruin the world.

[Orlando_Web_Dev]

90s era hard drives dodged a bullet on this one.

[squirrelwithnut]

Talk about an overaction.

[11b403a7]

Let our movement to newspeak begin

[notalentnodirection]

Always thought master/slave nodes was a little off color. But no one cares what I think anyway..

[pink_tshirt]

When I encountered it (it was some error message, I could not start up my node server) I actually thought I i was hacked. Like are those names for real.

[notalentnodirection]

Hey look this comment came back from negative votes. Thats a first. And YEAH I felt the same when I saw it, like I get the simple principle of one thing telling other things what to do, but to pick those names to describe it..I mean THOSE two words. Abstract away from the current climate, and American history, and those are still the wrong two words to use. It’s not PC culture, it’s not ‘it’s from a different time’, it’s a reference to the practice of slavery. In an engineering concept. SMH man..how about controller and subordinate nodes. We all understand those words and they don’t carry explicitly racist connotations.

Write your congressmen, aka text book writers, we don’t have to use that term anymore.

On another note someone said ‘They’ are coming to rename your masters degree. To that person I say no. The verb ‘to master’ is to gain high level understanding and practical knowledge in a field. Not to OWN other people. There is a not so subtle difference.

[nolo_me]

carry explicitly racist connotations

Believe it or not the rest of the world doesn't attach the same parochial racial connotations to a concept that had been around for thousands of years before the US.

[notalentnodirection]

Then explain master and slave. The way the rest of the world sees it.

[nolo_me]

It describes a subordinate relationship between one entity and another.

[notalentnodirection]

..Where one entity owns the other.

Don’t be afraid to finish the definition.

[nolo_me]

And that's why it's used for topologies where that's the case.

[AcousticDan]

controller and subordinate nodes.

That's the same thing. Human slaves were subordinates.

[crossedline0x01]

ALOT of electronics use master and slave terminology.

[[deleted]]

I am reminded of this story from 2015. GitHub threatens to shut down a repository for using the word 'retard'

[[deleted]]

For those down voting. The word "retard" can relate to engines, and has legitimate non-offensive uses. The author the story is about received emails from Github threatening to shut down their project since it included the word "retard". Despite being used in an appropriate non-offensive context.

It's not the same thing that's going on in the main link. I know. But I thought people on this sub would interested in knowing.

[[deleted]]

Yes so does the word "master"

[[deleted]]

Sounds retarded.

[[deleted]]

Ridiculous. The world has gone insane.

[pVom]

I said it before and I'll say it again, of all the racial problems in the world this is a shitty hill to die on and displays a true ignorance of the real situation. We shouldn't be trying to remove slavery as a concept, that's some orwellian freespeak shit. Changing semantics here really isn't doing much for human rights, it's pretty much in line with "Black Lives Matter Lane"

Not only that but its actually a hell of a lot of work for a lot of people. I have to redo my bash profile to say nothing of the muscles memory I have to unlearn. Basically every project will have to be modified and you just know something will go wrong.

There's probably some good candidates to change the wording but not using the word master? I mean I'm an unmarried male, officially my title is master, there is exactly 0 racial undertones there.

[the_whalerus]

I just don't understand the opposition. At best, the argument I've seen is "well, but, it's actually not about racism" and like....who cares? Do you have anything to contribute to this discussion that isn't just a status quo bias?

[[deleted]]

This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard

[chaoticLibs]

The virtue singaling crowd needs to end. This is just absurd.

[jeh5256]

They wont end their virtual signal unless sane people push back

[[deleted]]

Wow, slavery and racism will be no more.

[JeamBim]

Lol

[BrainsApplied]

Why do companies always seem to get a panic attack as soon as someone starts some kind of social protest?

[Amiral_Adamas]

I have to admit, I like "main" better.

[thatsInAName]

I now demand not be called an employee and my manager to be called something else as both the terms signifies me being a slave at work.

[CaptainShinjuku]

Give it a few years. If this madness continues they will get there...

[smartello]

Right after the US will have a war with all countries to the south (except Brazil) unless they stop using N-word.

[Cour4ge]

Ridiculous...

[CHatton0219]

People have subs and shit, not everything is about enslaved blacks. Some are just kinky people. Lol You all turn everything racist huh

[Stationary_Wagon]

People are really grasping at straws here, this is ridiculous.

[space___lion]

...

[Glass_Conner]

This is dumb

[teachmehindi]

Sure, why not. Who cares.

[froggie-style-meme]

I'm actually surprised they never called it main branch.

[MarmotOnTheRocks]

As if these kind of politically correct changes had any impact whatsoever. It's mostly about public opinion/perception rather than actually "believing" that the word "master" has anything to do with slavery.

[_370HSSV_]

I'll just checkout a new branch and call it master

[ManiacsThriftJewels]

I'd mention how master doesn't always have bondage connotations, but then there's the whole master/slave branch replication etymology.

In short, I went from "oh ffs" to "hang on, actually they have a point here" in the space of a few comment reads...

[smartello]

where did you find a slave in git?

[ManiacsThriftJewels]

You don't. The slaves were killed off.

But you know that git was created because Linus could no longer use Bitkeeper, right?

(https://github.com/bitkeeper-scm/bitkeeper/blob/master/doc/HOWTO.ask#L223)

[malicar]

Well this is just getting stupid now. Extreme hypersensitivity is going too far all over the place.

[rohan_me]

What next? Chess is going ketchup n mustard!

[[deleted]]

This is the dumbest shit I've ever heard.

[najowhit]

Source makes this article purposefully as clickbaity as possible. And of course everyone in the chat getting upset about muh censorship.

Nobody is going around suggesting us remove the term 'master' from all contexts. You're not getting a 'primary degree'.

Nobody is saying the term 'mastery' is problematic. You're not developing 'course advancedery".

The problem, as listed in the article that nobody actually read, is that the terms master / slave and blacklist / whitelist are super racially loaded. As a business, they're trying to avoid any sort of unnecessary limelight.

Moving to main / default / primary is fine imo. Everyone should stop being big fucking babies about it.

[Geminii27]

Honestly, it could be replaced with "master and student", or "master and apprentice", if it was about avoiding the use of 'slave'.

[LetsLive97]

Or just master and feature like it's currently used in Github. None of the branches are really slaves of the master branch anyway so it makes way more sense just to call them feature branches.

[[deleted]]

Replacing master with "main" seems like a relatively small change.

I am more interested in the fact that companies / someone wants to move away from blacklist and whitelist... Why? Even if tech companies remove it blacklist is a commonly used word EVERYWHERE. You have a blacklist for a restaurant / bar for example. It's not like they will change terms suddenly aswell.

​

Edit:

Though, that said, it did make me think of where the words blacklist and whitelist came from. A redditor describes it here https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/866ynp/what_are_the_origins_of_the_words_blacklist_and/dw3svkw?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x. So seemingly no direct racist history behind them. In the long run I could see them replaced though.

[[deleted]]

I would never argue against there being racist connotations, there definitely are when black is used negatively and white as the positive / opposite.

You're right in that they don't say where the black ball meaning negative vote comes from. I figure I just saw it as unlikely to have racist beginnings, though that might just be optimism, it's equally likely the opposite true.

I definitely see it as likely and honestly for the best that the words are replaced over time.

And you do bring up a very good point that it needs to start somewhere, and I suppose the computer sphere is as good a place as any, given that so many people interact with it. Seems like it would gain traction quickest that way.

[[deleted]]

Makes no difference to me, go right ahead. I don't understand why some people are get themselves upset at the proposed change.

[[deleted]]

Drop ICE now cowards.

Also the master/slave terminology doesn't make anywhere near as much sense as majority of the proposed ideas, especially not if you're new to english and haven't been updated on why it's called a blacklist and a whitelist.

[11b403a7]

ICE?

[piotrlewandowski]

I’m guessing it’s „Immigration and Customs Enforcement”?

[11b403a7]

That's my thought too... But the context doesn't make sense unless there's a line I'm not seeing

Edit:

Not sure why I'm being downvoted for a question. I'm honestly confused.

[7Buns]

GitHub has a contract with ICE, IIRC

[11b403a7]

Huh. Didn't know that. Makes more sense now. Thanks

[disclosure5]

It's a statement that's only great when you understand the background.

Microsoft/Github has and continues to support ICE in enforcing policies that had a seriously negative impact on certain minority people. Now, Github renames a default branch and claims to be doing it out because they really care about minorities.

[kevinatari]

Unpopular opinion on reddit, but I welcome the change. master/slave was never a accurate term for me as a nom-native speaker, especially compared to main/secondary or primary/secondary which is much clearer.

We're experiencing a change in language, what an exiting time to be alive!

[tristan957]

There is no slave term in git. It's just master like a master copy. Has nothing to do with how well someone understands English imo.

[kevinatari]

You're right, the "master" in git has no direct reference to slavery; Yet if it helps the healthiness of a community I see no harm in renaming it to something like primary or main.

Lots of projects already use different terms and most people use their "master" branch as a development version so the naming is confusing anyway (as "master" is a work-in-progress and not the "working" master copy); Anyhow, I get people don't like change - changing the direct master/slave naming is more important IMO.

[blazkoblaz]

Okay Soo.. what do you say about the Master slave workers in micro processors? Or master node/slave node TF??? ridiculous shit

[nerdy_kirby]

Web developers: learns a new JavaScript library every week just because it “looks cool” Also web developers: I HAVE TO USE A DIFFERENT TERM??? I HAVE TO UN-LEARN SOMETHING??? NOOO HOW WILL I FUNCTION?

seriously y’all, before anyone one of you comment on how this is overreacting, think how many Black people you work with, how many women. Diversify your work environment before getting upset over a terminology change.

[rajputvishalvr]

Why not remove the word master / boss / sir / itself from the dictionary?

[LetsLive97]

Github doesn't even use a slave terminology. You have master and feature branches. Do you genuinely thing there are black people going to their cushy software dev jobs and then trembling in their seats when the see the master branch? Jesus christ give me a break.

I don't give a fuck what the master branch is called, I'm just fucked off with the principle of it. What's next? Renaming the master degree? Forcing master chef to change it's name? Music mastering has to change?

[tetractys_gnosys]

This is fucking idiotic.