Background: I'm white, my grandfather who is sadly no longer with us, was captured as a slave in the early 1940s forced to work on the Burma Railway, also known as "Death Railway". Content warning: if you Google Image Burma Railway, you're going to see things other than just the railway.
In all my years of pushing to and pulling from master branches, I have not once made an internal association between that action and slavery. Until now.
Offence is subjective of course and having never made this stretch of a link between a master branch and slavery, it is in no way and has never been personally offensive to me. People are different and I accept that others do take offence to this kind of language. But it is a stretch. It is a word that when taken out of context has other meanings.
If a company such as GitHub are saying that this is wrong and must be changed, my question is why now? Why not 2 years ago or 5 years ago? Is it something that wasn't considered offensive and now is? There is so much outrage about this particular subject which doesn't actually solve any real problems. There are of course real issues that we need to get on top of. Contemporary slavery for example. Slavery is still massively at large in many places of the world including and especially the U.S.A. Just because it's gone underground it does not mean that it doesn't exist. We need to do something about it.
This name change only seems to be creating more separation between us all when the world needs us to come together as one to solve the real problems, of which there are many.
In all my years of pushing to and pulling from master branches, I have not once made an internal association between that action and slavery. Until now.
Offence is subjective of course and having never made this stretch of a link between a master branch and slavery, it is in no way and has never been personally offensive to me. People are different and I accept that others do take offence to this kind of language. But it is a stretch. It is a word that when taken out of context has other meanings.
If a company such as GitHub are saying that this is wrong and must be changed, my question is why now? Why not 2 years ago or 5 years ago? Is it something that wasn't considered offensive and now is? There is so much outrage about this particular subject which doesn't actually solve any real problems. There are of course real issues that we need to get on top of. Contemporary slavery for example. Slavery is still massively at large in many places of the world including and especially the U.S.A. Just because it's gone underground it does not mean that it doesn't exist. We need to do something about it.
This name change only seems to be creating more separation between us all when the world needs us to come together as one to solve the real problems, of which there are many.