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GitHub to replace “master” with alternative term to avoid slavery references
- Minor49er 6y agoI guess the change is unnecessary because it never referenced human slavery to begin with
- rodw 6y agoWhether or not the etymology of the term is derogatory or racially insensitive is missing the point. The point is that some words are particularly emotionally charged for some readers. In this case that's not irrational, and rational or not, in this case that's probably observable. In the context of technical writing and source code, there's no particularly good reason to use a term that makes a sizable chunk of the readers uncomfortable.
- KYXanhZA 6y agoHow far can we take it? Can we ask CEO Nat Friedman to rename himself to Nat Peaceman, because Milton Friedman allegedly had close ties to Chile at the wrong time? People can be triggered by that name, and dual meanings obviously do no longer exist.
- steve_taylor 6y agoWill they stop accepting MasterCard?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- linsomniac 6y agoBack in the mid '90s we went through this, primarily with the IDE specification. Master/slave was renamed "Device 0, Device 1" to break the association with slavery. Perhaps there's some better nomenclature that people will really connect with to prevent this from resurfacing again?
- ian-g 6y agoI like primary/replica as a base replacement
- valand 6y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23500093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23500093