[gentoo-project] Renaming the "master" branch

[gentoo-project] Renaming the "master" branch

[Michał Górny]

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Hello,

We have been opposing the "industry trend" to use more inclusive
language for a long time.  I don't disagree with our pragmatic rationale
-- we are simply using the original branch name as used by git(1) back
when we created the repository.

I honestly don't think any of us ever meant to use the word "master"
in any derogatory sense, neither I do think the git author or the Linux
kernel authors meant to.  In fact, given how many of us are not native
English speakers, and may have learned much of English vocabulary in IT,
I can imagine that we may have learned such words as "master" and
"slave" primarily as IT terms, without even realizing their derogatory
meaning, or suspecting anything sinister about it.  It does sound like
a major hassle to do a change that can't be fully transparently handled
everywhere (add a lot of muscle memory on top of that) for something
that wasn't our (or our users, who also will be affected) malice.

I've only recently learned of a possible link, from David Rooney's book
"About Time".  To cite:

> The clock that was originally installed at the Greenwich observatory
> in 1927 to transmit the time to Rugby for broadcast to the British
> Empire was a type called a "free-pendulum," which actually comprised
> two devices, one called the “master” and the other termed
> the "slave."  The master clock was free and did little work;
> the slave clock was forced to march to the master’s beat and carried
> out all the labor of time distribution to the radio transmitters.
> The terminology of slave clocks had been coined in 1904, by a British
> government astronomer, but not at Greenwich.  It was in Africa,
> at the Cape of Good Hope observatory, at the height of the Western
> imperial scramble to carve up the continent and its people, that
> a white British official, working at an institution whose very walls
> had been built by enslaved people, chose to enslave clocks themselves.
> Over a century later, people still routinely use the racist
> terminology of master-and-slave systems in engineering and horology,
> yet it carries a violent weight of the imperial past, born in Africa.

That said, I don't know whether the Linux terminology is directly linked
to the timekeeping terminology.  Perhaps it's a just a coincidence.
I definitely hold no blame for whoever copied the terms that were
probably industry-standard by the time.

Still, as they say, now that I've seen it, I can't unsee it.

So I'd like to propose that we finally consider changing it.  For
a start, we could try with gentoo.git, as our flagship repository.

Of course, there's also the matter of choosing the name.  The common
choice at this point seems to be "main".  Other options include "trunk"
(for Subversion fans, I suppose), "default".  However, given that we've
been making major progress, I think we could take two steps at a time
and choose something that actually embraces diversity.  My favorite, one
that rhymes with "main", would be "nyan".

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny


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Re: [gentoo-project] Renaming the "master" branch

[Ionen Wolkens]

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On Mon, Apr 01, 2024 at 05:19:40PM +0200, Michał Górny wrote:
> So I'd like to propose that we finally consider changing it.  For
> a start, we could try with gentoo.git, as our flagship repository.

While not strictly against it, my own vote would go toward keeping
things as-is rather than break tons of setup/scripts over something
that is still without ill intent and personally still think is a
stretch to see it that way.
-- 
ionen

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Re: [gentoo-project] Renaming the "master" branch

[Toralf Förster]

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On 4/1/24 17:36, Ionen Wolkens wrote:
> However, given that we've
> been making major progress, I think we could take two steps at a time
> and choose something that actually embraces diversity.  My favorite, one
> that rhymes with "main", would be "nyan".

Are there concerns related to "main"? I was under the impression that 
"main" is the default, e.g. at GitLab and GutHub, right?

-- 
Toralf
PGP 23217DA7 9B888F45


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Re: [gentoo-project] Renaming the "master" branch

[Arsen Arsenović]

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Hi,

Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> writes:

> Hello,
>
> We have been opposing the "industry trend" to use more inclusive
> language for a long time.  I don't disagree with our pragmatic
> rationale -- we are simply using the original branch name as used by
> git(1) back when we created the repository.
>
> I honestly don't think any of us ever meant to use the word "master"
> in any derogatory sense, neither I do think the git author or the
> Linux kernel authors meant to.  In fact, given how many of us are not
> native English speakers, and may have learned much of English
> vocabulary in IT, I can imagine that we may have learned such words as
> "master" and "slave" primarily as IT terms, without even realizing
> their derogatory meaning, or suspecting anything sinister about it.
> It does sound like a major hassle to do a change that can't be fully
> transparently handled everywhere (add a lot of muscle memory on top of
> that) for something that wasn't our (or our users, who also will be
> affected) malice.
>
> I've only recently learned of a possible link, from David Rooney's
> book "About Time".  To cite:
>
>> The clock that was originally installed at the Greenwich observatory
>> in 1927 to transmit the time to Rugby for broadcast to the British
>> Empire was a type called a "free-pendulum," which actually comprised
>> two devices, one called the “master” and the other termed
>> the "slave."  The master clock was free and did little work;
>> the slave clock was forced to march to the master’s beat and carried
>> out all the labor of time distribution to the radio transmitters.
>> The terminology of slave clocks had been coined in 1904, by a British
>> government astronomer, but not at Greenwich.  It was in Africa,
>> at the Cape of Good Hope observatory, at the height of the Western
>> imperial scramble to carve up the continent and its people, that
>> a white British official, working at an institution whose very walls
>> had been built by enslaved people, chose to enslave clocks themselves.
>> Over a century later, people still routinely use the racist
>> terminology of master-and-slave systems in engineering and horology,
>> yet it carries a violent weight of the imperial past, born in Africa.
>
> That said, I don't know whether the Linux terminology is directly
> linked to the timekeeping terminology.  Perhaps it's a just a
> coincidence.  I definitely hold no blame for whoever copied the terms
> that were probably industry-standard by the time.
>
> Still, as they say, now that I've seen it, I can't unsee it.
>
> So I'd like to propose that we finally consider changing it.  For
> a start, we could try with gentoo.git, as our flagship repository.
>
> Of course, there's also the matter of choosing the name.  The common
> choice at this point seems to be "main".  Other options include
> "trunk" (for Subversion fans, I suppose), "default".  However, given
> that we've been making major progress, I think we could take two steps
> at a time and choose something that actually embraces diversity.  My
> favorite, one that rhymes with "main", would be "nyan".

IMO, this is fine.  I'm personally partial to "trunk" but won't object
to any name.  The GCC project does this by having 'master' and 'trunk'
always point to the same thing and enabling pushing to both, IIRC.

That should preserve compatibility.

If it is not possible to enable push to both, having master alias trunk
but pushes be forced to trunk would also work.

Have a lovely day!
-- 
Arsen Arsenović

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Re: [gentoo-project] Renaming the "master" branch

[Andreas K. Huettel]

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> Of course, there's also the matter of choosing the name.  The common
> choice at this point seems to be "main".  Other options include "trunk"
> (for Subversion fans, I suppose), "default".  However, given that we've
> been making major progress, I think we could take two steps at a time
> and choose something that actually embraces diversity.  My favorite, one
> that rhymes with "main", would be "nyan".
> 

There's also the option of using "blead" (from Perl), which fits with the
definition of the bleeding edge distro :)

-- 
Andreas K. Hüttel
dilfridge@gentoo.org
Gentoo Linux developer 
(council, comrel, toolchain, base-system, perl, libreoffice)
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Dilfridge

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Re: [gentoo-project] Renaming the "master" branch

[Ulrich Mueller]

>>>>> On Mon, 01 Apr 2024, Michał Górny wrote:

> Of course, there's also the matter of choosing the name.  The common
> choice at this point seems to be "main".  Other options include "trunk"
> (for Subversion fans, I suppose), "default".  However, given that we've
> been making major progress, I think we could take two steps at a time
> and choose something that actually embraces diversity.  My favorite, one
> that rhymes with "main", would be "nyan".

IIUC UTF-8 is allowed in branch names. So maybe we could we include
emoji? U+1F431 CAT FACE or U+1F308 RAINBOW might be good candidates.

Re: [gentoo-project] Renaming the "master" branch

[Viorel Munteanu]

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La 01.04.2024 18:19, Michał Górny a scris:
> So I'd like to propose that we finally consider changing it.  For
> a start, we could try with gentoo.git, as our flagship repository.
>
> Of course, there's also the matter of choosing the name.  The common
> choice at this point seems to be "main".  Other options include "trunk"
> (for Subversion fans, I suppose), "default".  However, given that we've
> been making major progress, I think we could take two steps at a time
> and choose something that actually embraces diversity.  My favorite, one
> that rhymes with "main", would be "nyan".
>
Hi,


"Nyan" sounds ok-ish, but the Nyan cat is more than 10 years old, maybe 
we should find something newer?  How about "numnum"? [1]


Regards,

Viorel


[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GArzu9ttQ0M


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Re: [gentoo-project] Renaming the "master" branch

[Kenton Groombridge]

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On 24/04/01 05:19PM, Michał Górny wrote:
> So I'd like to propose that we finally consider changing it.  For
> a start, we could try with gentoo.git, as our flagship repository.
> 
> Of course, there's also the matter of choosing the name.  The common
> choice at this point seems to be "main".  Other options include "trunk"
> (for Subversion fans, I suppose), "default".  However, given that we've
> been making major progress, I think we could take two steps at a time
> and choose something that actually embraces diversity.  My favorite, one
> that rhymes with "main", would be "nyan".
> 

I don't have strong feelings either way, though I worry about the
technical baggage that will come with this change.

If I had to pick, my vote is for "main" as this is the default used by
Github et al and what most other projects have adopted. I think this
word also makes the most sense as a direct replacement for "master" in
this context.

-- 
Kenton Groombridge
Gentoo Linux Developer, SELinux Project

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Re: [gentoo-project] Renaming the "master" branch

[Ionen Wolkens]

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On Mon, Apr 01, 2024 at 05:19:40PM +0200, Michał Górny wrote:
> Of course, there's also the matter of choosing the name.  The common
> choice at this point seems to be "main".  Other options include "trunk"
> (for Subversion fans, I suppose), "default".  However, given that we've
> been making major progress, I think we could take two steps at a time
> and choose something that actually embraces diversity.  My favorite, one
> that rhymes with "main", would be "nyan".

If we really do this I'm really opposed to nyan though, think "doge"
or "wow" would be good.
-- 
ionen

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Re: [gentoo-project] Renaming the "master" branch

[Michał Górny]

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On Mon, 2024-04-01 at 19:14 +0300, Viorel Munteanu wrote:
> La 01.04.2024 18:19, Michał Górny a scris:
> > So I'd like to propose that we finally consider changing it.  For
> > a start, we could try with gentoo.git, as our flagship repository.
> > 
> > Of course, there's also the matter of choosing the name.  The common
> > choice at this point seems to be "main".  Other options include "trunk"
> > (for Subversion fans, I suppose), "default".  However, given that we've
> > been making major progress, I think we could take two steps at a time
> > and choose something that actually embraces diversity.  My favorite, one
> > that rhymes with "main", would be "nyan".
> > 
> Hi,
> 
> 
> "Nyan" sounds ok-ish, but the Nyan cat is more than 10 years old, maybe 
> we should find something newer?  How about "numnum"? [1]
> 

Actually, I was thinking of:

https://steins-gate.fandom.com/wiki/Faris_NyanNyan

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny


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Re: [gentoo-project] Renaming the "master" branch

[Matt Turner]

On Mon, Apr 1, 2024 at 11:19 AM Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Of course, there's also the matter of choosing the name.  The common
> choice at this point seems to be "main".

Yes, please. Let's just stick with common defaults.

Re: [gentoo-project] Renaming the "master" branch

[Toralf Förster]

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On 4/1/24 17:40, Toralf Förster wrote:
> On 4/1/24 17:36, Ionen Wolkens wrote:
>> However, given that we've
>> been making major progress, I think we could take two steps at a time
>> and choose something that actually embraces diversity.  My favorite, one
>> that rhymes with "main", would be "nyan". 

Entirely OT, but the wrong Reply-to might be related to 
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1368519#c10.

-- 
Toralf
PGP 23217DA7 9B888F45


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Re: [gentoo-project] Renaming the "master" branch

[Sam James]

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Arsen Arsenović <arsen@gentoo.org> writes:

> Hi,
>
> Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> writes:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> We have been opposing the "industry trend" to use more inclusive
>> language for a long time.  I don't disagree with our pragmatic
>> rationale -- we are simply using the original branch name as used by
>> git(1) back when we created the repository.
>>
>> I honestly don't think any of us ever meant to use the word "master"
>> in any derogatory sense, neither I do think the git author or the
>> Linux kernel authors meant to.  In fact, given how many of us are not
>> native English speakers, and may have learned much of English
>> vocabulary in IT, I can imagine that we may have learned such words as
>> "master" and "slave" primarily as IT terms, without even realizing
>> their derogatory meaning, or suspecting anything sinister about it.
>> It does sound like a major hassle to do a change that can't be fully
>> transparently handled everywhere (add a lot of muscle memory on top of
>> that) for something that wasn't our (or our users, who also will be
>> affected) malice.
>>
>> I've only recently learned of a possible link, from David Rooney's
>> book "About Time".  To cite:
>>
>>> The clock that was originally installed at the Greenwich observatory
>>> in 1927 to transmit the time to Rugby for broadcast to the British
>>> Empire was a type called a "free-pendulum," which actually comprised
>>> two devices, one called the “master” and the other termed
>>> the "slave."  The master clock was free and did little work;
>>> the slave clock was forced to march to the master’s beat and carried
>>> out all the labor of time distribution to the radio transmitters.
>>> The terminology of slave clocks had been coined in 1904, by a British
>>> government astronomer, but not at Greenwich.  It was in Africa,
>>> at the Cape of Good Hope observatory, at the height of the Western
>>> imperial scramble to carve up the continent and its people, that
>>> a white British official, working at an institution whose very walls
>>> had been built by enslaved people, chose to enslave clocks themselves.
>>> Over a century later, people still routinely use the racist
>>> terminology of master-and-slave systems in engineering and horology,
>>> yet it carries a violent weight of the imperial past, born in Africa.
>>
>> That said, I don't know whether the Linux terminology is directly
>> linked to the timekeeping terminology.  Perhaps it's a just a
>> coincidence.  I definitely hold no blame for whoever copied the terms
>> that were probably industry-standard by the time.
>>
>> Still, as they say, now that I've seen it, I can't unsee it.
>>
>> So I'd like to propose that we finally consider changing it.  For
>> a start, we could try with gentoo.git, as our flagship repository.
>>
>> Of course, there's also the matter of choosing the name.  The common
>> choice at this point seems to be "main".  Other options include
>> "trunk" (for Subversion fans, I suppose), "default".  However, given
>> that we've been making major progress, I think we could take two steps
>> at a time and choose something that actually embraces diversity.  My
>> favorite, one that rhymes with "main", would be "nyan".
>
> IMO, this is fine.  I'm personally partial to "trunk" but won't object
> to any name.  The GCC project does this by having 'master' and 'trunk'
> always point to the same thing and enabling pushing to both, IIRC.
>
> That should preserve compatibility.
>
> If it is not possible to enable push to both, having master alias trunk
> but pushes be forced to trunk would also work.

**IF** we were to do anything, I'd prefer this. trunk if we must, and
push to both. But I'd prefer it if we just left it, doesn't seem worth
the churn and I find the muscle memory inconsistencies between projects
really jarring.

>
> Have a lovely day!

thanks,
sam

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Re: [gentoo-project] Renaming the "master" branch

[Jonas Stein]

On  2024-04-01 18:12, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
>>>>>> On Mon, 01 Apr 2024, Michał Górny wrote:
> 
>> Of course, there's also the matter of choosing the name.  The common
>> choice at this point seems to be "main".  Other options include "trunk"
>> (for Subversion fans, I suppose), "default".  However, given that we've
>> been making major progress, I think we could take two steps at a time
>> and choose something that actually embraces diversity.  My favorite, one
>> that rhymes with "main", would be "nyan".
> 
> IIUC UTF-8 is allowed in branch names. So maybe we could we include
> emoji? U+1F431 CAT FACE or U+1F308 RAINBOW might be good candidates.

Sounds reasonable, especially, because it is a shortest suggested string 
and we can find out if there are still tools that struggle with UTF-8 in 
2024.
But the rainbow has a strong political connotation and could be 
criticized in some places on earth.

I suggest to use the see-no-evil monkey (U+1F648) 🙈 because we commit 
to the slave tree with out looking and the
speak-no-evil monkey (U+1F64A) 🙊 because this is the face we make, when 
we see the changes were merged in main.

For future extension there is also a third one. The hear-no-evil monkey 
because we never heard of the extension before (U+1F649) 🙉.

It is so intuitive that you will not forget it from now on.

Happy weekend.

-- 
Best,
Jonas

Re: [gentoo-project] Renaming the "master" branch

[Roy Bamford]

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On 2024.04.01 16:19, Michał Górny wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> We have been opposing the "industry trend" to use more inclusive
> language for a long time.  I don't disagree with our pragmatic
> rationale
> -- we are simply using the original branch name as used by git(1)
>back
> when we created the repository.
> 
> I honestly don't think any of us ever meant to use the word "master"
> in any derogatory sense, neither I do think the git author or the
> Linux
> kernel authors meant to.  In fact, given how many of us are not
>native
> English speakers, and may have learned much of English vocabulary in
> IT,
> I can imagine that we may have learned such words as "master" and
> "slave" primarily as IT terms, without even realizing their
>derogatory
> meaning, or suspecting anything sinister about it.  It does sound
>like
> a major hassle to do a change that can't be fully transparently
> handled
> everywhere (add a lot of muscle memory on top of that) for something
> that wasn't our (or our users, who also will be affected) malice.
> 
> I've only recently learned of a possible link, from David Rooney's
> book
> "About Time".  To cite:
> 
> > The clock that was originally installed at the Greenwich
> >observatory
> > in 1927 to transmit the time to Rugby for broadcast to the British
> > Empire was a type called a "free-pendulum," which actually
> >comprised
> > two devices, one called the “master” and the other termed
> > the "slave."  The master clock was free and did little work;
> > the slave clock was forced to march to the master’s beat and
> >carried
> > out all the labor of time distribution to the radio transmitters.
> > The terminology of slave clocks had been coined in 1904, by a
> British
> > government astronomer, but not at Greenwich.  It was in Africa,
> > at the Cape of Good Hope observatory, at the height of the Western
> > imperial scramble to carve up the continent and its people, that
> > a white British official, working at an institution whose very
> >walls
> > had been built by enslaved people, chose to enslave clocks
> themselves.
> > Over a century later, people still routinely use the racist
> > terminology of master-and-slave systems in engineering and
> >horology,
> > yet it carries a violent weight of the imperial past, born in
> Africa.
> 
> That said, I don't know whether the Linux terminology is directly
> linked
> to the timekeeping terminology.  Perhaps it's a just a coincidence.
> I definitely hold no blame for whoever copied the terms that were
> probably industry-standard by the time.
> 
> Still, as they say, now that I've seen it, I can't unsee it.
> 
> So I'd like to propose that we finally consider changing it.  For
> a start, we could try with gentoo.git, as our flagship repository.
> 
> Of course, there's also the matter of choosing the name.  The common
> choice at this point seems to be "main".  Other options include
> "trunk"
> (for Subversion fans, I suppose), "default".  However, given that
> we've
> been making major progress, I think we could take two steps at a time
> and choose something that actually embraces diversity.  My favorite,
> one
> that rhymes with "main", would be "nyan".
> 
> -- 
> Best regards,
> Michał Górny
> 
> 

Team,

Slavery and the relationship indicated by the terms master and slave
go back much further than horology. The Romans would have had a need
to use the Latin terms as they didn't speak English. They were not
first either.

Not only do we need to avoid the English terms like these, by extension
all translations, even to dead languages must be removed too. 

Silly isn't it, it reminds me of Newspeak. (Read 1984)

Its a case offence being taken, not given and another attempt to
rewrite/deny history.

My vote is just leave it in a mess but I'm an old fart and have
memories of terms now considered far worse being used in everyday
speech. I don't recall any pressure to remove them from our vocabulary,
they just fell into disuse.

-- 
Regards,

Roy Bamford
(Neddyseagoon) a member of
elections
gentoo-ops
forum-mods
arm64











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