You're not wrong about the "old" meaning of "master" but in most projects, the master branch is expected to function and be reasonably up to date. So it is a re

You're not wrong about the "old" meaning of "master" but in most projects, the master branch is expected to function and be reasonably up to date. So it is a reasonable jumping off point for both deployment and development. Consequently, Linus didn't make a mistake with that, and it is not a bad metaphor. There are many projects that don't work this way because they chose to violate conventions. That does not mean "master" is a bad choice of name, it means people are not conforming to the original pattern. Any other "main" type name would suffer from the exact same workflow dependence.