Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 17, 2020 17:26 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
In reply to: Loaded terms in free software by rbranco
Parent article: Loaded terms in free software

GitHub is going to do what they're going to do. Same with other hosting platforms and repository maintainers. If they rename their main branch `main`, `default`, `develop`, whatever, nothing in Git today stops them from doing that anyways. Tools which assume "master" is some special branch have always been wrong in this situation. Git upstream is, so far, adding a configuration option to allow changing the name that gets made by default in new repositories. Whether git itself will change this at some point or not remains to be seen.

As the author of some Git tooling myself, going through and removing the assumption that a branch named "master" exists at all and, if it does, is the natural destination for all code, is a benefit anyways. Will I rename my repo branches? Depends on how much work that involves and what other contributors to the projects consider reasonable disruption. But I'll probably use whatever upstream default ends up being used. Either way, I'm glad that there will now exist a blessed way to ask what that is without asking the remote server what its `HEAD` branch name is (which is still canonical, but not being forced to consider network failures into your repo info query codepaths is always a benefit). Asking `refs/remotes/origin/HEAD` is OK, but there seems to be some difference in bare clones and it doesn't quite work flawlessly in my testing.

Now if only there were a way to query what the name of the default *remote* is existed…

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 17, 2020 17:27 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

> But I'll probably use whatever upstream default ends up being used.

For new projects. Renaming and migration to whatever any new default is would still be subject to disruption calculus.

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 17, 2020 18:05 UTC (Wed) by rbranco (subscriber, #129813) [Link] (1 responses)

> Whether git itself will change this at some point or not remains to be seen.

The discussion is already underway:

http://public-inbox.org/git/a34e4244-835e-976a-8fb4-7fc76...

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 17, 2020 19:30 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

I read through that thread as of some state yesterday. As of that point, the configuration value appeared to be on a road to acceptance, but discussion of actually changing the default in git itself was not. Unfortunately, I'm not subscribed and reading the diff from my last read doesn't appear to be trivial while trying to follow thread order (or it's laziness and not wanting to have to tread the invective exhibited by some in there and I'd rather just wait for something to actually land in `next`).

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 18, 2020 17:11 UTC (Thu) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (2 responses)

I wonder how many tutorials are going to be obsoleted after this change...

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 18, 2020 18:47 UTC (Thu) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

Assuming GitHub changes its naming of the first branch for new repos, yes, those will need some updates. If Git does it, even more will need changed. However, we've always had trouble with outdated tutorials not going away on the Internet. This "just" adds some Git ones to the side of that road as well. Are we going to also go and be upset at how many "install MyFavoriteDistro" tutorials never got updated after fundamental changes in Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.? Tutorials can bitrot just like code and no one goes and hangs signs on the obsolete ones there either.

And even here it is a name change (that I expect most should be able to reconcile with an old tutorial and a single difference when they try to replicate its steps), not something as fundamental as an installer or partition editor rewrite. Sure, there will be people who don't put 2+2 together for a default branch name change, but I feel they have a *long* road ahead of them anyways with Git in that case…

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 18, 2020 18:55 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

git is actually changing even without master->main rename. For example, "git checkout" is getting split into "git switch" and "git restore". This change alone will necessitate rewrite of tons of tutorials.

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 19, 2020 18:32 UTC (Fri) by amarao (guest, #87073) [Link] (3 responses)

I recently asked on SO if there are some one who is offended by presense of master/slave terminology. Unfortunately it was closed in 20 minutes with zero comments.

May be here is the better place to ask.

My question: is there someone who have their ancestors been enslaved, who is offended by use of master/slave in technical documentation of source code. A simple "I'm offended" would be enough.

Insofar I never saw anyone saying this for themselves, only people with 'it may be offencive for someone else".

My grand grand dad was a krepostnoy in Russia. I'm not offended. Is there someone who is?

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 22, 2020 9:45 UTC (Mon) by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958) [Link]

There was a thread on r/programming where black people suggested the change is made because of not enough black people telling that it is a stupid change.

However of course I have no way of confirming they were actually who they said they were.

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 25, 2020 19:30 UTC (Thu) by jwarnica (subscriber, #27492) [Link]

Like improving the armor of the parts of WWII bombers that return with bullet holes in them, you are entirely missing the point.

(I'll expand on my quip that as I wrote it, I changed "beefing up" to "improving". Its a idiom in common use, but changing it to something more accurate and less offensive cost me nothing.)

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jul 1, 2020 5:09 UTC (Wed) by anton.molyboha (guest, #62820) [Link]

I met a person who told me they were offended by the "master" and "slave" terms.

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 21, 2020 11:02 UTC (Sun) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]

Commercial entities are spineless on those subjects and will bow to whichever direction the wind blows to.

They will happily make Arian products in Nazi Germany, Jewish products in Israël, Latino products under Obama and Mexican-free products under Trump.

Don’t ask a commercial entity to take a political position (except on their own taxes).