Re: [PATCH 00/28] Use main as default branch name

[Peter Hadlaw <hadlawp@gmail.com>]

Hello,

It's worth noting that the word "slave" comes from the en_slav_ement
of Slavs (the Slavic people of Eastern Europe).

I encourage the whole git team to really think about the changes you are making.

It was just reported to me that a professional friend of mine had
confusion as to why,
after initializing a new repository, they couldn't navigate to the
`master` branch of their repository.

I understand this is back-of-the-napkin type math but stay with me for
one moment.
I also understand GitHub is not all of git users, but I just pulled
the number to help me out here.

If GitHub has 40 million users but let's say half of them aren't
active, so now we are at 20 million.
(Replace this number with how many actual users of git are out there.)

Let's even say half of them are on board and aware of this "harmless"
change to a more "sensitive" doublespeak representation of the
"master" copy/branch of the repo.

That leaves us with 10 million users of git that are either unaware or
are not on board. Let's say it takes 3 minutes for a user to search on
the web why exactly they can't
navigate to their "master" branch. That's 30 million minutes of time
wasted, or about 57 man-YEARs of time wasted.... for what?

When do we put our foot down and say enough is enough, and not
everything is offensive?

Again, please reconsider making this change towards doublespeak and
consider the ramifications of how much actual human life & time will
be wasted.

Kind Regards,
Peter

On Wed, Nov 18, 2020 at 6:01 PM Johannes Schindelin
<Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
>
> Hi Philip,
>
> On Wed, 18 Nov 2020, Philip Oakley wrote:
>
> > An alternative in the other direction is to go with the 'not currently
> > on any branch' (detached at nowhere) but then require users to
> > deliberately create their first branch with their chosen name. This
> > moves the 'backward incompatibility' to a different place, which may be
> > easier to manage.
>
> It might be easier to manage for _us_, the Git developers. But every user
> who initializes a repository and wants to push now needs to take the extra
> step to give their unnamed branch ("detached HEAD" is _still_ confusing
> new users!!!) a name.
>
> That would be much more disruptive than choosing a "rather dull and
> boring" name instead of a rather racially-charged one.
>
> And we promised to try to minimize the disruption to Git users.
>
> Ciao,
> Dscho



-- 
Peter