[wilt]

The problem with saying change something if it offends someone is that is open to abuse. Are you going to remove something that speaks out about a government killing its own citizens because that government finds it offensive? That would be stupid.

In the case of master and slave i don't mind the defaults for new projects being changed but this new trend of going around and demanding everyone update their projects right now is just silly. You are asking people to put in a huge ammount of effort and possibly break lots of external things for the sake of making a few white guys feel like they did something.

[sebazzz]

It gives also ammunition to force everyone to change their current repo.

If I don't change my repositories for regardless what reason there is, I risk myself now being called a racist. And that can have serious consequences (again though public rage "that company employs racists").

[eesmith]

This "new trend" is at least 17 years old - https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/masterslave/ .

You'll note the text:

> In May 2003, a black employee of the county’s Probation Department filed a discrimination complaint with the Office of Affirmative Action Compliance after spotting “master” and “slave” labels on a videotape machine,

which suggest your "for the sake of making a few white guys" might not be the only purpose.

Other examples have made it to HN, like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7801646 on "Replaced occurrences of master/slave terminology with leader/follower " for Django, from 6 years ago.