DEV Community

Discussion on: Why GitHub renaming master is good

Collapse
 
jessehouwing profile image
Jesse Houwing

The term came from bitkeeper, they used the term master/slave, see also:

mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-de...

Collapse
 
Sloan, the sloth mascot
Comment deleted
 
jessehouwing profile image
Jesse Houwing

The word "master" has many meanings and the slavery one isn't the first that comes to mind regardless of the skin color.

To you. to many others.

But to many other people when you say master, they say slave.

And yes, naming is hard. Renaming is sometimes harder. But it may be the right thing to do. And remember, nobody is forcing you to. This is happening by choice, not by a malevolent master. You can choose not to participate. That's OK too.

Thread Thread
 
Sloan, the sloth mascot
Comment deleted
 
simonw profile image
Simon Willison

Why?

Because they live in America, a country that still has living citizens who's grandparents were born into slavery - and who remember hearing stories of slavery from their grandparents when they were children.

I'm from the UK but I live in the USA now. Until I moved here I had never understood how recent and raw the wounds of slavery were.