Re: The master branch rename, and avoiding another v1.6.0 git-foo fiasco

[Philippe Blain <levraiphilippeblain@gmail.com>]

Hi Felipe, 

> Le 13 nov. 2020 à 01:47, Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> a écrit :
> 
> On Fri, Nov 13, 2020 at 12:02 AM D.E. Goodman-Wilson
> <don@goodman-wilson.com> wrote:
>>> Did we hear the testimony of a single black person that was offended
>> by the word?
>> 
>>> Nobody affected by this change actually asked for this change
>> 
>> Five minutes searching Twitter will reveal a great number of Black git users championing this change.
> 
> This is anecdotal evidence.
> 
> We all live in our own digital bubble. Every person's Twitter feed is
> different, and Google search results depend on where you live, and
> your past searches.
> 
> You may find "a great number" of users that match that criteria, what
> I find is only people criticizing the move, and after five minutes I
> haven't found a single black person actually offended by the current
> name.
> 
>> How is reopening this discussion anything but a distraction?
> 
> This discussion never happened.
> 
> Everyone in the June thread argued about the different names of the
> potential branch, and the culture war implications. Virtually *nobody*
> argued about the manner of implementation: deprecation period, clear
> warnings, Git 3.0 consideration.

I couldn't agree more. We really need to be warning users several versions in advance,
and I mean months or even years. I don't wan't to come up with a number, but I would
guess that maybe 85 %, (or even 95 % ?) of the world-wide Git user base is unaware that any discussion
on that topic ever took place.

Brian mentioned that some people voicing their concern on the list did not abide by the code of conduct. 
There was also very vocal disagreement voiced in the Git-for-Windows GitHub project before the
discussion reached the mailing list, of which a lot was also considered to not abide by that project's
code of conduct. While I agree that discussion should be done with respect, and some people that 
are driven to react to such important changes might not be aware of any code of conduct they should 
follow, because they don't participate in the "day-to-day" life of the project, just the fact that they even
care enough to voice their disagreement should be a big red flag in terms of how this change should be done,
in my opinion.

I had avoided commenting on this whole subject, but the main point you are bringing, 
that such a change, if done, should be made with great care to our user base and a lot 
more warning, is a very important one. 

Thanks for bringing it up.

Philippe.