[maushu]

Yes, Petr Baudis decided on that name (and also "upstream"). [1]

He regrets it now because of his lack of English language knowledge at the time and that "main" makes more sense but he originally based it on the "master copy" concept.

I personally don't understand why people decided on this hill to die on. There are much better targets like database master-slave replication.

[1] https://twitter.com/xpasky/status/1272280760280637441

[ggerritsen]

Ah interesting, thanks!

It seems then that master doesn't seem like a very loaded word in the context of git. Even so, changing it would then not be very impactful as well (not counting any CI/CD or other config that relies on the master branch name).

[BraveTea]

I think this discussion raises several interesting questions, two of which: “when is vocabulary non-inclusive?”, and “should vocabulary be changed accordingly even if the word doesn’t have an offensive origin?”. I have played and replayed several debates on the latter in my head over the last 24 hours and it always comes down to someone arguing “why not?” with the counter argument being “where does it end?”. To be honest I do not believe there to be a correct answer to these questions, and certainly not an answer that will last for more than a couple of years, maybe a decade. My personal belief is that inaction born from fear is always worse than action sprung from kindness (yes history has proven me wrong on multiple terrible occasions, I know) so I would say, change it, for a better world starts with the first step.

[pims]

Not renaming the default branch of your version control system is not inaction. You should first ask: does it make sense and does it accomplish anything? While the cause is just, you still have the right to nuance your thoughts and actions, and not decide to ban words "just in case".

Let's be honest, the world isn't going to be better because the default branch of git is called main instead of master, but it will probably be slightly worse if you impoverish the language of hundreds of millions of people, which also happens to be the main international language.

As maushu said above there are much more meaningful targets.