main(n.)

  Old English mægen (Mercian megen) "power, bodily strength; force, violent effort; strength of mind or will; efficacy; supernatural power," from Proto-Germanic *maginam "power" (source also of Old High German megin "strength, power, ability"), reconstructed to be from a suffixed form of PIE root *magh- "to be able, have power."

  The original sense of "power" is preserved in phrase might and main. Also used in Middle English for "royal power or authority" (c. 1400), "military strength" (c. 1300), "application of force" (c. 1300).

Branch names like "stable", "next", and "protobreak" are a lot more understandable than "master" or even "main."

PS: I have an african wife and let me tell you she has no beef with the word, she will have more beef with me talking to the cashier in a way that is too friendly

So if I disagree with an argument you make (about anything) and say it is a bad argument then this will be censorship?

You don't know what does it mean to be censored.

And git isn't preventing you from having a master branch. In fact, they're providing instructions for people who prefer that.

It sounds like you're saying that git maintainers are intending for you to feel like less of a person because you don't agree with their choice, but I don't understand how you arrived at that conclusion.

No expressing an opinion, eve ln an unqualified unconditional one, about a word is not the fee definition of censorship. Forcing others not to publish what you don't like is censorship (even if that dislike is based in context and conditions, and not unconditional opposition to a word.) Presenting an opinion is just presenting an opinion.

> it just breaks my somewhat autistic brain on the principle.

Yeah, you not liking an opinion doesn’t convert that opinion into censorship, either.

When this became a social moment, there was a sentiment that everybody should learn to code and lots of people were being exposed to things like git, and having casual discussions about those things on social media, at meetups, etc.

It went from being an professional engineer's tool to part of a pop culture zeitgeist, where everybody could share some opinion about it.

While many people know what a "master recording" is when the phrase comes up, the number of people actively thinking about and discussing audio/studio engineering remains way smaller and has way less intersection with communities compelled to make noise about language politics.

It was more that the naming was potentially offensive and cost next to nothing to change.

The people griping about it are the ones outraged.

We should get rid of all these words right?

Is there some quantitative evidence that this made the world a better place?

They just changed the script, took about 30 seconds. If you had a lot of scripts, then you could always make a master branch and use it instead of main. That would also be pretty quick to fix.

And it wasn't like when Github changed things (or now git itself will be changing) there weren't announcements. You'd have to have been living under a rock to not know about it and be taken by surprise.

Abd if it took Cloudflare 3 hours to find out that a rust process was panicing and crashing, a branch name change in someone's ci/cd is less expected in the chain of probable causes and could take more time to detect.

It's annoying, but you just dig up the new credentials, update the script to point to the right place and move on with your life. I shudder to think of the kind of environment where updating a branch name... not even a domain or IP address... would cause significant turmoil.

Don't use sexist language

Little bit little remove or ban the language that might be offensive to some. Twist the meaning of things to ensure that normal words become "shameful" words when used. Until people forget. Then you can reach this society were there is no contestation, no social agitation and political unrest because the concept doesn't even exist.