In my view, it’s a bit more nuanced. In modern development at companies, most of the time trunk-based version management is used and having it called “main” mak

In my view, it’s a bit more nuanced. In modern development at companies, most of the time trunk-based version management is used and having it called “main” makes sense, but earlier, when got was one of the few VCSs out there for open source development, I think master may have conveyed a different meaning. Generally, with the highly-distributed nature of systems like Linux, you need to know which remote and branch the version you are updating or referencing was mastered in for the remote you are submitting a patch to, for example. I think of it as coming from the term master copy—not because it has power over other branches but because it’s the canonical authoritative source for that remote.