[hn_throwaway_99]

> If the industry as a whole is going to make this change, I would prefer we choose a name that can be unambiguously referenced in conversation.

It that case, though, we would name our default branch "stable". We don't allow pushes to master unless everything has passed our full test suite. I'm not sure if it's a good or bad thing to have the development model hardcoded into the name of the default branch - I've certainly worked in long-lived repositories where we've changed the model over time.

[ehfeng]

Sure. I don't know if 'unstable' is the best name for everyone, but if the industry decides to spend the engineering time to rename default branches, we shouldn't be just be switching to the first synonym in the thesaurus, but a word that's actually more fitting than 'master'.

'mastering' is an artifact of vinyl and boxed software. Now that a lot of software is continuously tested and shipped, 'master' is not the right word for those processes. Even if you're shipping on-premise software, there rarely is a single 'master' copy anymore.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastering_(audio)

As a side note, I've seen people try this, but there is no amount of testing that can guarantee stability. So, 'stable' feels like a false promise. Also, in the event of a bug causing downtime, _someone_ always has the ability to push directly to master and it's always possible that a fix might break a new commit's tests, even if it fixes the downtime.

[akatom]

> As a side note, I've seen people try this, but there is no amount of testing that can guarantee stability. So, 'stable' feels like a false promise.

Which, by the same argument, makes all branches unstable. Why would you want to name, arguably the least unstable branch in the mentioned scenario - unstable?