this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2021
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The problem is with the idiots who think that the master branch is racist
Also, ethical software is bullshit IMO. Free software 4life
There is also a problem with people who make a big drama when projects dare to use a different name for their main branch.
Believe me; I do not give a shit what others use. After all, I (like others) know other RCS systems outside Git, and I don't find it a problem that e.g. hg uses HEAD (and has been using HEAD since its early days, before the "master is racist" nonsense), svn uses trunk (I think, admittedly I'm not a fan of centralized RCS systems).
I have a problem when others want to bully me into changing it when I don't want to.
Edit: my only problem with this state is that there is no standard. I have no problem with hg's choice, because EVERY hg repo's master branch is called HEAD. But now with git, there two gazillion possibilites, and no standard. Some have moved to trunk, main, I've seem some people use "actual", and some people use "master", of course. So I do find it annoying that people had to ruin a standard that worked for over a decade.
Did we, though? You are the one who brought up the whole "master"/"main" debate, it was not part of my argument. And in any case, nothing in the code prevents you from naming your branch "master", only the default setting was changed.
Yes there is. Your git client will automatically checkout the default branch from the remote. You can even programmatically detect the current branch after cloning so what's your problem?
Yes, now you have to get out of your way to detect the name of the master branch. You used to be able to assume that it was "master", obviously much less code required
That's not true. Even when "master" was the default, i had to "get out of my way" to support many projects who did not use "master" as default branch name. Whatever setting i personally use on my repos, i can hardcode in my scripts. When dealing with other people's repositories, it's an entirely different story.
It is. The master/slave terminology in computing is directly inherited from masters and slaves in the real world. If you don't believe me look it up. In other areas of computing (eg. DNS/email) we say "primary"/"secondary" and it's just fine like that. Some forges have recently switched to "main" as a default branch name and it's also just fine.
Why so? Is free-software surveillance equipment good in your opinion? Do you believe technology is neutral at all? Is it neutral to have a surveillance society? Can't we do better, more ethical tech as a society?
Do you think that a government violating it's own constitution will be stopped by a software license? Do people really believe that?
Thechnology is like any other tool, say, a hammer or a screwdriver. It serves it's owner. It depends on the owner what it's used for.
Surveillance should be illegal either way, we shouldn't rely on software licenses to do that.
I will also insist that master is not racist. It's not like only a single race was ever enslaved.
Also would you call the master bedroom, racist? I hope not.
No certainly not. Though i'm happy if they don't use my code, and even happier if governments disappear entirely.
A hammer can be used to beat someone to death, but so could your bare hands. That's just not what hammers are for, but it's technically possible. A gun on the other hand, is designed explicitly to kill people and can not be used to build a shelf with. Technology is not neutral, it's very political what it enables/prevents you to do.
Call it "slavist" or authoritarian if you prefer. It's still a widespread mentality we need to get rid of. Although in the past 500 years (contrary to antique slavery) slavery has been very racialized, especially by Europe/USA when it comes to black people from Africa, but also in other countries with specific ethnic minorities. Whether the term is racist or not, i don't care. What i care is it makes a metaphor that is dubious and makes people uncomfortable, so let's just remove it and not argue anymore. In any case, we probably agree simply changing a word is not going to erase centuries of institutional racism.
Sure we agree on that. We need to dismantle all nation States and build autonomous communes so people can live free. How does that invalidate my argument that neonazis and other reactionaries are organizing worldwide to spread their ideology, even in the free-software world?