Open-source isn't racist. Stop attacking us.

article.md

Recently there has been a push towards renaming 'master' to 'main' in all git repositories. Advocates reason that the terminology is noninclusive, and has racist overtones[1]--[5].

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CEO of GitHub, [6]

The alleged offensive meaning of master and slave in computer coding is pure unsubstantiated allegation, yet to question it is now considered scandalous. This is illiteracy fuelled by virtue signalling and fear. I am amazed that those who think those programming terms are evil are not going after Robert Nozick's classic "The Tale of the Slave"[7] by totally misunderstanding it and claiming it normalises slavery.

If this attempt to find and replace all words with a possibly objectionable connotation continues, then soon we'll have to change CTRL+F to a more acceptable letter. CTRL itself has connotations of force and manipulation, not to mention COMMANDS, and on it goes. Are commands to become mere prompts or suggestions? Suggestions can be very suggestive, and that was meant to be the main problem in the first place with the programming term "master". Next they'll phase out floppy discs, given the connotations of floppy. And how about the "git" in GitHub: does that imply that those who use GitHub are "foolish or contemptible people" (the dictionary definition of git)? Or maybe it doesn't, and maybe computer programmers are not at all the problem.

Language is enriched when we talk of Unix daemon spawning. Does that normalise the original meaning of daemon spawning, especially when you take into account the image of a red demon used for Unix daemon [FreeBSD]? It's a question so ridiculous that to ask it is to answer it. Yet that is exactly the kind of comment made by those opposing "master" in programming.

The open-source community is all about reducing barriers and always has been. To imply otherwise undermines the work already done by those who have demonstrated their inclusivity by their actions and their demonstrated real-world commitment to open-source.

To put the aura of blame on those who use the term "master" and "slave" in programming is misplaced and counterproductive. There are real targets to go after. Computer coders are not one of them.

References:

[1] S. Brown, "Microsoft's Github is removing coding terms like 'master' and 'slave,'" CNET. https://www.cnet.com/news/microsofts-github-is-removing-coding-terms-like-master-and-slave/ (accessed Jun. 18, 2020). [2] G. C. Cellan-Jones Rory, "Microsoft's GitHub drops master-slave jargon," BBC News, Jun. 15, 2020. [3] "GitHub to replace 'master' with alternative term to avoid slavery references | ZDNet." https://www.zdnet.com/article/github-to-replace-master-with-alternative-term-to-avoid-slavery-references/ (accessed Jun. 18, 2020). [4] "GitHub is working on renaming default branch from 'master' | Hacker News." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23500093 (accessed Jun. 18, 2020). [5] F. Houghton and S. Houghton, "'Blacklists' and 'whitelists': a salutary warning concerning the prevalence of racist language in discussions of predatory publishing," J. Med. Libr. Assoc., vol. 106, no. 4, Oct. 2018, doi: 10.5195/JMLA.2018.490. [6] "(2) Nat Friedman on Twitter: '@Una @github It's a great idea and we are already working on this! cc @billygriffin22' / Twitter," Twitter. https://twitter.com/natfriedman/status/1271253144442253312 (accessed Jun. 18, 2020). [7] R. Nozick, Anarchy, state, and utopia. New York: Basic Books, 1974.

letter.md

Here is the letter we've emailed a few choice open-source developers with:

G'Day disgruntled open-source contributor,

It's crazy what the PC police are doing. Using terms like 'master', 'slave' does not mean we're racist FFS...

For the past decade or so I've been pushing open-source, for the past 4 years or so I've been doing my PhD (Medicine) which is all open-source, charitable, patent-free, and self-funded. Also, my business is open-source. You can find over 300 open-source projects on my personal and organisation's GitHub.

We don't require people to sign contributor agreements, neither do we have code of conducts nor other ridiculous pseudo legal postmodern encroachments. Everything I've licensed under (Apache-2.0 OR MIT).

We've created compilers to speedup development---and increase quality (test & doc coverage, code consistency)---of Kotlin, Java, Rust, TypeScript, and Swift code.

We've wrapped Apache Libcloud with an ecosystem of Python packages and tools to bootstrap nodes. Rewriting this in C---ANSI C: C89---currently, with a focus on interoperability---OpenBSD, Linux, SunOS→Solaris→OpenIndiana, FreeBSD, macOS, Windows---that will eventuate into dozens---if not 100s!---of independent package managers (similar to `rvm` and `nvm`); which will then be contributed to the various existent configuration management tools, including Puppet, Chef, SALT, and Ansible.

We're also built key-value store abstractions in C, C++, Java, Go, and Rust. Starting to contribute this to Apache Mesos now, to decouple their Apache ZooKeeper dependency and allow them to pick between etcd, Consul, and ZooKeeper. Subsequently we'll contribute to Kubernetes, to decouple their etcd dependency, and allow them to pick between the aforementioned.

Finally, I've just started rewriting the meta machine-learning framework I built during my PhD---splitting it into a few projects (each with their own repos)---adding clean support for: JAX, TensorFlow, [vanilla] Keras, and PyTorch.

Would be great to have your code---or just idea/conceptual---contributions to any of our current or proposed projects.

The linking principle between all these projects is towards the charitable goals of my doctorate, namely, to facilitate very large-scale medical diagnostic screening programmes. My target is glaucoma (the leading cause of irreversible blindness); and more recently; diabetic retinopathy. This is especially needed in the Third World, where the ratio of ophthalmologist to citizen is badly skewed, but even in Australia more than 50% of cases are missed. All this software combined will enable a small engineering team to deploy anywhere, at any scale, and develop higher quality---and more interoperable---technologies faster.

Open-source collaboration; without the bullshit. Chat anytime,

Samuel Marks, [email protected]

Charity | consultancy | https://github.com/SamuelMarks | https://github.com/offscale | LinkedIn

Go fuck yourself

Also, whatever crawler you used to email a bunch of people this shit is definitely against GitHub’s ToS and I will be reporting this now.

Fuck off and fuck your spam. Will also be reporting

I was sure I didn't accept the subscription to fragilewhiteguy.com.
Guess I missclicked.

Reported to https://support.github.com/contact with attached email and screenshot of the gist. Yes, is its clear breach of ToS and invades our privacy. Whatever the reason, it is unacceptable to do this.

Fuck off you utter flog. Don't scrape my email and don't spam me with your creepy bullshit.

As I agree that this is a bad idea with changing words, because in my opinion words aren't racist, people and they behavior and how it's affect other people is i didn't agree to a spam and mailing me, reporting this as well.

I already wrote my response on my web site.
http://meta.ath0.com/2020/06/git-branch-naming/

The mass emailing is not good: it is called ‘spam’. While I do not think the term ‘master’ is really bad, it is offensive to email so many people without prior consent.

This said, linking technical terms to skin colours is not a good idea. In Chinese, we have terms that can be transliterated as ‘white day’ and ‘black night’, and they do have implications about good and bad. But it has nothing to do with skin colours. Linking them to racism would be nonsense.

And I think similarly about the master branch in Git.

1. This is spam and clearly a violation of GitHub's ToS.
2. I am genuinely curious whether I ended up in some hit list here or whether this fired off completely aimlessly.
3. Nice job making use of this drama to benefit yourself and advertise your own projects.

I don’t think anyone will hear us. Like that ***** said that Community has already spoken, based on mail listing from like max 10 people where the whole thread on GitHub got spammed by much more people who disagree with the whole thing.

Similar thing was with the Santa Hat in VSCode.

I am working on reducing the worldwide prevalence of blindness. Soon, will be helping to facilitate large-scale screening programmes. In fact, I was meant to be in Laos this month to observe how my research clinical supervisor—an ophthalmologist—logistically handle their charitable approach, so I would better understand what is necessary to run outreach screening programmes there.

Open-source has, AFAIK, always been about the code. We don't care if it's contributed by a Turkish national or a cat avatar. We care that the code is good.

Open-source has been about inclusivity, and that includes providing a safe refuge contributors of all creed and background — whether they are Muslim, disabled, or political dissidents. Open-source is about contribution and code quality. The very nature of public version control repositories with open contribution—i.e., what GitHub is built on—is inclusivity.

Apologies for the spam. This was me feeling passionate about the cause and work I am doing that was being impacted by platform-wide channel.

These very public virtue signalling by GitHub and others are a disservice to what open-source has always been about. It implies, or even explicitly states, that we are noninclusive. The very nature of public version control repositories with open contribution—i.e., what GitHub is built on—is inclusivity.

The technologies involved are extensive. I am barely smart enough to make the first prototype, and will rely on the much smarter open-source communities to improve upon the base. There is everything from biomedical-engineering of new medical-devices to AI to mobile-apps to accessibility concerns to consider.

This is all being done open-source (Apache-2.0 OR MIT), patent-free, and entirely self-funded.

I'm here encouraging everyone to work communally on actually important projects, like the aforementioned, and not the virtue-signalling trivia of changing terminology.

Let's work on solving the big problems like blindness! Language policing isn't going to make this work easier, and I implore you to give this a consideration.

Thank you

Samuel, thanks for this! I have relatives who are blind, and thank you for helping! One day I hope your work will be used by millions.

Everyone should give it a good moment to think about platform's language policing. A lot of us are frustrated at unaccountable platform.

@dchem shill

This is blatant race baiting trying to get free advertisement for your shitty company. Rot in hell.

Don't be abusive.

These very public virtue signalling by GitHub and others are a disservice to what open-source has always been about. It implies, or even explicitly states, that we are noninclusive.

You're the one who is "virtue signaling", by making.a massive public stink about GitHub adding a configurable default which has literally zero impact on your existing projects.

Your Github mustn't rename the default branch or people will think we're not inclusive argument seems insincere to me, because it seems like you're going out of your way to alienate people, and that's generally not the behavior of someone who cares about inclusivity. In short, it seems like you're concern trolling.

If you don't think the new default is necessary, simply don't use it, and go on calling your code branches whatever you want. We don't need to hear about how wonderful you are.

If you don't think the new default is necessary, simply don't use it, and go on calling your code branches whatever you want. We don't need to hear about how wonderful you are.

I think github is talking about making this into a platform wide thing, rather than configurable default like gitlab. Let me know if I am wrong.

Also, why are you so combative? This seems excessive.

@SamuelMarks

• Email spam isn't OK
• Stop talking about yourself
• Promoting your company this way is disgusting
• Most devs already think like you. For me, the master branch will always be called "master", it's a standard, the people that don't like it can rename it without affecting everyone else!

@awoimbee
I do have a bit of a skin in the game since I have blind relatives, but it doesn't seem like he's promoting his company. He's talking about a charity.
Let's cool our desire to pull out the pitchfork. 🙏

For a record, I've been a github user until 2015, now I only use it for public projects that I have agreed to become maintainer for.

I think github is talking about making this into a platform wide thing, rather than configurable default like gitlab.

You can already choose what branch to use as the default. There's no way they are going to take that functionality away and force you to use a particular branch name.

Also, why are you so combative? This seems excessive.

He accused people of "illiteracy", "public virtue signalling" and being "the PC police".

Sooo what you're saying is that people should language police in a statement that is literally language policing?

Even if I agreed with your stance, which I don't, you pivot in one paragraph from what is essentially trolling to flat-out shilling. Spamming people at random doesn't build consensus or generate support, it just makes people angry. And it puts you in breach of the GitHub AUP (misuse of personal information), and the GDPR.

Now, off you trot.

A+ for the cause and courage.
D for the implementation.

The water is boiling and the frogs are sweating. I understand this mass mailing was not the best way to proceed, but the issue is damn serious.

The issue is serious? 😂 Oh no they changed a branch name what will we ever do.

And yeah if you are really passionate about the topic of censorship and political propaganda, you wouldn't sabotage your message by attaching agenda for your own personal gain, however benevolent it is. Does seem you just tried to capitalize on the topic, where did you get my email by the way? I never gave it to you.

@pointcache That's a pretty big claim regarding the maintainer of git-for-windows. Can you provide some evidence?

@pointcache That's a pretty big claim regarding the maintainer of git-for-windows. Can you provide some evidence?

Yeah, got mixed up some elses comment from here git-for-windows/git#2674
Deleted my statement.