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by komali2 2195 days ago
> Can you point to people telling their stories of how the common name for default Git branches affected them?

Not without doxxing friends in a kind of "Dance for the nice man, Timothy, so I can win an internet argument" way that doesn't taste very good to me. If there's blog posts out there, perhaps? I haven't seen any.

> "We must do something; this is something; therefore, we must do it."

I am with you that we should always be on guard against milquetoast corporate bullshit. I got an email from my Texas senator John Cornyn about how he supports Black Lives Matters, but of course there's nothing in his email and no statements from him condemning racist dogwhistles from his party leader. Hollow words and hollow actions allow people and companies to "cash in" on a movement at cost to the real activists.

That being said, this isn't just github doing this. Most companies in my personal sphere are taking similar steps. My gf's, mine, my old coworkers across the industry, here and in New York... it's a sort of solidarity movement at this point.

1 comments

Thank you. While public blog posts or social media threads would be better, if you've personally seen or heard black friends or colleagues talking about being bothered by Git branches being called "master," at least that's something.

A statement of support not paired with more concrete action is not much but at minimum a clear statement establishes a standard they can be held to in the future, e.g. "you said you support Black Lives Matter, why aren't voting for Bill 1234?"