Rename "master" branch to "main" for glibc 2.35 release.

Siddhesh Poyarekar siddhesh@gotplt.org
Mon Jan 31 20:15:59 GMT 2022


On 31/01/2022 23:39, Adhemerval Zanella via Libc-alpha wrote:
> I must say that I am failing to see any technical advantage or improvement
> of doing this change.
> 

There's no technical advantage because it is not a technical issue to 
begin with.  In fact, rejecting the suggestion saying that there's no 
technical advantage sends the unsaid message that we don't care enough 
to give this social issue any more serious thought than trying to glean 
technical merit from it.

I personally have no lived experience about the master/slave 
nomenclature since I'm not from the USA and I'm not 
African/African-American.  I don't think we have any regular African or 
African-American contributors either who could share their experiences 
about how (or if) the nomenclature affects them.  We're a mostly white 
community with smidges of Asian for flavour, albeit geographically very 
diverse (perhaps our relative ignorance/indifference towards this 
mostly-American origin movement is because of the latter) so I don't 
think any of us can reasonably speak to this.

My personal impression is that mentorship/paid programs would do far 
more good than renaming things, but it's just that, a third person 
impression with no lived experience in that context.  Besides, why not both?

This is a social issue, so maybe it makes more sense to look at the 
social advantages and/or disadvantages of making (or not) the change and 
not focus so much on technical reasons.

Siddhesh


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