Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. This sort of provocation is close to trolling. It seriously damages the thread, especially when the topic is provocative. Please don't do it again.

There are plenty of ways to make substantive comments on both sides of this question, as other users have demonstrated. Please either do that instead, or (always a fine option) don't post.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

This all thread is a huge flamewar...

It's a matter of degree. If you don't consider that, it leads to a nihilistic "why bother" attitude that actually makes things much worse. Let's inch our way toward something better instead.

See, that would be making yourself a victim of "hysteria". If you just raised an eyebrow and moved on then your claim that it's "hysteria" might have more weight but you'd have less opportunity to grandstand about it. This is also an amusing choice of terminology because of the origin of the word hysteria but I'm going to guess you didn't do that on purpose.

Do we really have to examine the origin of every word we use rather than according its modern common usage and use in context?

We're not examining every word. This article is about examining a specific word, with a specific history, within a specific context.

In a specific country, whose industry takes free open source labor from all over the world and then imposes its own cultural values.

Open source people from other regions provide the majority of code and have no say in political decisions. One might be tempted to say that they are slaves.

Please don't use HN for political and ideological flamewar, regardless of what you're battling for or against. We're trying for something else here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> imposes its own cultural values.

This is a default. If it offends your sensibilities so much, you can configure it to be something else.

Heck, I'd even go as far as suggesting that "main" is a more common word for non-native speakers of english than "master", making it more intuitive for non-US developers.

Why are you so invested in something with so very little impact on you?

That's how society keeps going downhill. Just raise an eyebrow and keep moving whenever X is introduced, soon enough we'll be paying the price.

Whether it's called "master" or "main" affects me very little.

Whether it's called "master" or "main" affects some people very much.

I'm enough of a team player that I'm willing to make the switch to make others more comfortable.

Adoption of more inclusive terms is hardly "hysteria".

This IETF memo^1 makes a rational, compelling case for adopting alternate terms.

I encourage you to read it, and try taking a broader, more empathetic view. Pause to consider the weight and connotations of certain words for certain groups of people, before claiming victimhood or accusing others of hysteria.

Characterizing the change as "PC Politburo" word-policing strikes me as a shallow, knee-jerk response to a positive change. Fewer characters, less baggage, clearer semantics. What's the harm?

1. https://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-knodel-terminology-04.html

Part of taking a broad and empathetic approach is understanding all people's emotions, thoughts and desires without necessarily sympathetiszing with them. Empathy is a pre requisite for agreement, discussion and conflict resolution.

What these types of changes show, however is that there is no discussion and the opposition to such change indicates a "lack of empathy" which is a classic othering tactic. That to me is worrying. People should be able to meet in the middle, to negotiate change.

These types of change appear to have been done with no real agreement, no meeting in the middle. It appears as if, ironically (and with a bit of exaggeration from me), no empathy outside of the ingroup was used.

The reality is no holistic understanding or discussion is required as it's a foregone decision and one where almost everyone in this discussion forum has no say about. We should just get on and live with it.

"What these types of changes show, however is that there is no discussion and the opposition to such change indicates a "lack of empathy" which is a classic othering tactic."

Huh? That's quite a bit further a stretch than any of the "woke" accusations I've received for suggesting a pivot from "master" to "main" might actually be a simple improvement.

You sound more hysterical than they do. How badly does this affect you and your life, really?

> You sound more hysterical than they do. How badly does this affect you and your life, really?

So much this.

Naming things is an arbitrary process, and adopting a default naming suggestion to accommodate someone's sensibilities is something that does not have any negative impact on anyone. At all.

To those who are whining about a default naming suggestion: grow up.

Downvoted because sneering dismissal serves no purpose except to make discourse more toxic.

I fell too that this master-slave thing is a overstretch and a little hysteria. That being said, I do think 'main' is a better name for what this branch is supposed to be and it might be better for beginners to understand. Of course, 'master' is the term we are all used to and that will cause a lot of confusion and broken pipelines too.

Is it really necessary to change it every time? Github did the same thing last year, I just went into my organisations settings and switched the default back to master.

I did that recently. I had been developing some code for a few months, committing to a local repo, and I finally decided to upload it to GitHub. The local branch was named "master" because that is Git's default, but GitHub decided it should be "main", so the first thing I did after creating the repo was to revert it to "master".

Fuck virtue signalling and Twitter keyboard warriors. My parents grew up under an oppressive ultra-catholic dictatorship where they had to pretend to be "good" Christians, and I for sure don't want society to go the same way again.