"master" term - no one cares

"master" term - no one cares

[Ryan]

I installed the windows version of git today and was annoyed with the “woke” message stating that the “master” branch term will be changed to a different name to be more “inclusive".

Don’t waste your time, just get rid of this annoying woke question in your installer.  Very annoying!!  No one thinks git has anything to do with slavery.  On the plus side, git is great, I just started learning it.  Thanks!

Ryan

Re: "master" term - no one cares

[Felipe Contreras]

On Fri, Aug 12, 2022 at 10:10 PM Ryan <rmrmail@gmx.com> wrote:
>
> I installed the windows version of git today and was annoyed with the “woke” message stating that the “master” branch term will be changed to a different name to be more “inclusive".
>
> Don’t waste your time, just get rid of this annoying woke question in your installer.  Very annoying!!  No one thinks git has anything to do with slavery.  On the plus side, git is great, I just started learning it.  Thanks!

This is not a Git issue, this is a Git for Windows[1] issue: they are
the ones exposing that message to their users at installation time.

You can raise the issue in their issue tracker [2], but I wouldn't
hold my breath.

[1] https://gitforwindows.org/
[2] https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/issues

-- 
Felipe Contreras

Re: "master" term - no one cares

[Philip Oakley]

On 13/08/2022 04:15, Felipe Contreras wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 12, 2022 at 10:10 PM Ryan <rmrmail@gmx.com> wrote:
>> I installed the windows version of git today and was annoyed with the “woke” message stating that the “master” branch term will be changed to a different name to be more “inclusive".
>>
>> Don’t waste your time, just get rid of this annoying woke question in your installer.  Very annoying!!  No one thinks git has anything to do with slavery.  On the plus side, git is great, I just started learning it.  Thanks!
> This is not a Git issue, this is a Git for Windows[1] issue: they are
> the ones exposing that message to their users at installation time.
>
> You can raise the issue in their issue tracker [2], but I wouldn't
> hold my breath.
>
> [1] https://gitforwindows.org/
> [2] https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/issues
>
Thanks for the comment. The wider point is to ensure that everyone can 
choose their own name for their primary line of development (plod), no 
matter how fast or slow they plod along.

There is a confusion between the use of the term that refers to the 
*personal* mastery of a _craft_ or _artisan_ technique and, at least one 
of, the historical choices for the usage of the term 'master', which was 
a direct reference to slave servitude. That was for the use of 
electrical circuits which would detect the 'tick' of a primary timing 
pendulum and then have all the actual clock faces that indicated the 
time be _driven_ from that 'master'.

The previous discussion include that of [1], in which I reference the 
paper (it's [4]) regarding the chronometer (clock) .

--
Philip

[1] 
https://lore.kernel.org/git/4bbc8658-4dad-10ef-65a4-8f0f4f4fffd4@iee.email/

Re: "master" term - no one cares

[Felipe Contreras]

On Sat, Aug 13, 2022 at 11:55 AM Philip Oakley <philipoakley@iee.email> wrote:
> On 13/08/2022 04:15, Felipe Contreras wrote:

> > This is not a Git issue, this is a Git for Windows[1] issue: they are
> > the ones exposing that message to their users at installation time.
> >
> Thanks for the comment. The wider point is to ensure that everyone can
> choose their own name for their primary line of development (plod), no
> matter how fast or slow they plod along.

Everyone can choose their own name without being asked. All software
has dozens if not hundreds of default configurations that the user is
not forced to choose at installation time. When I type "bash" I'm not
asked what kind of prompt I would like, that would be annoying. I can
choose to change my bash prompt any time I want, or I could choose to
keep using the default.

We don't ask users what name they would like for the remote every time
they clone a repository, we use "origin", and that's fine. The user
can choose a different origin with --origin, or just use the default.

Being forced to make an *unnecessary* choice is just annoying, but we
all know why the Git for Windows project is annoying their users and
it has nothing to do with technical aspects and everything to do with
*personal* politics.

> There is a confusion between the use of the term that refers to the
> *personal* mastery of a _craft_ or _artisan_ technique and, at least one
> of, the historical choices for the usage of the term 'master', which was
> a direct reference to slave servitude. That was for the use of
> electrical circuits which would detect the 'tick' of a primary timing
> pendulum and then have all the actual clock faces that indicated the
> time be _driven_ from that 'master'.

This may be the reason why some people used that name in the past, but
it's not the reason I use it.

For me if I was cloned there wouldn't be two equally valid versions of
me, *I* am the original one, I am the "master" copy. This doesn't
change if my clone is cloned in turn.

This is exactly how master branches in git are used. I have a master
branch of git.git, but it's not *the* master branch. *The* master
branch is the branch from which all the other branches came from,
including "maint" and "next", and all the dozens of branches in
thousands of other repositories. If the word "master" makes it sound
more important than all the other branches in all the other
repositories, it's because it is.

Regardless of what name people use and for what reason, the reality is
that "master" is still very widely used, despite of the campaign
against it which was clearly driven by ideological reasons. And it's
also a reality that the world is not going to end if users are not
being forced to pick that one controversial configuration at
installation time.

Cheers.

-- 
Felipe Contreras

Re: "master" term - no one cares

[demerphq]

On Sun, 14 Aug 2022, 04:35 Felipe Contreras, <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Aug 13, 2022 at 11:55 AM Philip Oakley <philipoakley@iee.email> wrote:
> > There is a confusion between the use of the term that refers to the
> > *personal* mastery of a _craft_ or _artisan_ technique and, at least one
> > of, the historical choices for the usage of the term 'master', which was
> > a direct reference to slave servitude. That was for the use of
> > electrical circuits which would detect the 'tick' of a primary timing
> > pendulum and then have all the actual clock faces that indicated the
> > time be _driven_ from that 'master'.
>
> This may be the reason why some people used that name in the past, but
> it's not the reason I use it.
>
> For me if I was cloned there wouldn't be two equally valid versions of
> me, *I* am the original one, I am the "master" copy. This doesn't
> change if my clone is cloned in turn.
>
> This is exactly how master branches in git are used. I have a master
> branch of git.git, but it's not *the* master branch. *The* master
> branch is the branch from which all the other branches came from,
> including "maint" and "next", and all the dozens of branches in
> thousands of other repositories. If the word "master" makes it sound
> more important than all the other branches in all the other
> repositories, it's because it is.
>
> Regardless of what name people use and for what reason, the reality is
> that "master" is still very widely used, despite of the campaign
> against it which was clearly driven by ideological reasons.

FWIW, I was a part of ensuring two large codebases did not use the
term "master" when they migrated to git long before it became a
subject of controversy.  Not because I had concerns over the
master/slave word association (it really wasnt on my mind) but simply
because the word "master" is too overloaded, and its use as a name
leads to all sorts of weird sentences involving the phrase "master
master", which for newbies especially can be really confusing.  I
found that introducing newbies to the concepts of distributed version
control goes much more smoothly when the "primary" branch is not
called "master", as it avoids the need to understand that there are
various different copies of the "master" branch where either only one
or none of them are actually master branches. Just writing this
paragraph makes me itch from having to distinguish the different uses
of the word master.

So while it is indisputable that what you call "ideological reasons"
really pushed this initiative into the public consciousness I think
there were and are a lot of us who are quite happy to support the
movement simply because we think using a word which (in English) has
multiple Noun, Adjective and Verb definitions is a poor choice for the
*name* (Proper Noun) of an arbitrary artifact, especially when those
definitions will likely be applied to thing being named. That the
phrase "master master" is in our vocabulary is a horrorshow. To me it
is not unlike naming someone's two children "Run" and "Slowly". Who is
going to understand what the heck "Run, Slowly, run slowly!" means?

The fact you need to distinguish <"the" master> from other uses of the
word "master" when talking above is to me a clear indication how bad a
name choice it was.  I get it, from certain perspectives, it is an
attractive name, but if you zoom out a bit, it just seems to regularly
lead to unfortunate sentences, at least in English. Try explaining how
the "master" branch is used to someone who knows nothing about tech,
like your Grandmother, or Uncle or something, I bet they are totally
lost within the first sentences. At least if they are English
speakers, other languages may overload the word differently. Dont
forget to explain the difference between "canonical master" like
Linus'es master master, and distinguish it from the various other
"master" branches that would be out there, and how most of them aren't
the master at all.

Anyway, just my $0.02. Thanks for listening.

cheers,
Yves

Re: "master" term - no one cares

[Felipe Contreras]

On Sun, Aug 14, 2022 at 3:26 AM demerphq <demerphq@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Sun, 14 Aug 2022, 04:35 Felipe Contreras, <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Sat, Aug 13, 2022 at 11:55 AM Philip Oakley <philipoakley@iee.email> wrote:
> > > There is a confusion between the use of the term that refers to the
> > > *personal* mastery of a _craft_ or _artisan_ technique and, at least one
> > > of, the historical choices for the usage of the term 'master', which was
> > > a direct reference to slave servitude. That was for the use of
> > > electrical circuits which would detect the 'tick' of a primary timing
> > > pendulum and then have all the actual clock faces that indicated the
> > > time be _driven_ from that 'master'.
> >
> > This may be the reason why some people used that name in the past, but
> > it's not the reason I use it.
> >
> > For me if I was cloned there wouldn't be two equally valid versions of
> > me, *I* am the original one, I am the "master" copy. This doesn't
> > change if my clone is cloned in turn.
> >
> > This is exactly how master branches in git are used. I have a master
> > branch of git.git, but it's not *the* master branch. *The* master
> > branch is the branch from which all the other branches came from,
> > including "maint" and "next", and all the dozens of branches in
> > thousands of other repositories. If the word "master" makes it sound
> > more important than all the other branches in all the other
> > repositories, it's because it is.
> >
> > Regardless of what name people use and for what reason, the reality is
> > that "master" is still very widely used, despite of the campaign
> > against it which was clearly driven by ideological reasons.
>
> FWIW, I was a part of ensuring two large codebases did not use the
> term "master" when they migrated to git long before it became a
> subject of controversy.  Not because I had concerns over the
> master/slave word association (it really wasnt on my mind) but simply
> because the word "master" is too overloaded, and its use as a name
> leads to all sorts of weird sentences involving the phrase "master
> master", which for newbies especially can be really confusing.  I
> found that introducing newbies to the concepts of distributed version
> control goes much more smoothly when the "primary" branch is not
> called "master", as it avoids the need to understand that there are
> various different copies of the "master" branch where either only one
> or none of them are actually master branches. Just writing this
> paragraph makes me itch from having to distinguish the different uses
> of the word master.

Sure, each person's mileage may vary, but personally I've never used
the phrase "master master", it's always "master's upstream", or
"origin's master", or something else. And I have no trouble realizing
that "master" is different from "origin/master".

> So while it is indisputable that what you call "ideological reasons"
> really pushed this initiative into the public consciousness I think
> there were and are a lot of us who are quite happy to support the
> movement simply because we think using a word which (in English) has
> multiple Noun, Adjective and Verb definitions is a poor choice for the
> *name* (Proper Noun) of an arbitrary artifact, especially when those
> definitions will likely be applied to thing being named. That the
> phrase "master master" is in our vocabulary is a horrorshow. To me it
> is not unlike naming someone's two children "Run" and "Slowly". Who is
> going to understand what the heck "Run, Slowly, run slowly!" means?

I disagree. English speakers have no problem with words that have
multiple meanings, the word "run" has hundreds of them, and people
keep using it. And as I said, "master master" is not in my vocabulary.

Moreover this usage is already part of the English language, there's
master key, master bedroom, master copy, master record. Somehow the
music industry doesn't have a problem dealing with multiple master
records.

If you personally want to use another name, go right ahead, but for
many of us "master" is a perfect name, and more importantly: a
perfectly fine default name.

Cheers.

-- 
Felipe Contreras