Nonsense, in the context of slavery - as in humans abusing other humans as forced labour - the word master has this meaning. In the context of a version control system it evidently does not.

But that's a different claim, isn't it?

> since it has nothing - and I mean absolutely nothing - to do with race, racism, insensitivity or otherwise abusive behaviour. Both words appear in the dictionary as they are, normal words without any racial connotation

"Nothing, absolutely nothing". "normal words without any racial connotation". That's untrue, isn't it? Perhaps you just need a better dictionary.

https://chambers.co.uk/search/?query=master&title=21st

> master noun 1 someone especially a man, who commands or controls. 2 the owner, especially a male owner, of a dog, slave, etc.

Let me put it in simple terms: words have different meanings and are used to describe different concepts depending on the context the word is used in. With me so far?

Now take the word 'port'. What does it mean?

- when you're on a ship it means the place where the ship goes to load and offload goods and people...

- ...except for when you're on the bridge in the middle of the ocean and the captain tells you to turn to port in which case it means 'turn to the left'...

- ...unless you're in the engine room talking to an engineer who says the cooling water port seems to be clogged for in that case it means the hole in the side of the ship through which water is taken in for cooling the engine...

- ...or you're in the radio room where the operator just plugged a network cable into the ethernet port on the satellite comms transceiver...

- Then again, when you're in the liquor store it indicates a fortified type of wine...

- ...however, when you're at an alcoholics anonymous meating people might take offence at you bandying this word around since their port wine habit nearly cost them their lives.

Does the offence taken by alcoholics mean the captain, helmsman, engineer and network technician need to find different words for their ship-haven, left-side-when-facing-forward, water-entry-hole and network-socket?

Of course not, don't you agree?

Ironically, this example is evidence against your point, not for it. All of these uses of the word "port" share a root semantic etymology, which is the point where two entities interface to exchange goods or information. Exactly the same way that all of the uses of the word "master" to describe a hierarchical relationship share a root semantic etymology, which is someone who owns or controls other human beings.