Forcing master to main was a good faith exploit

No matter how obnoxious the politics were around the change, "main" is objectively better. It's shorter hence quicker to type and nicer looking.

It was not forced in the sense that git itself still allow you to use master and still is the default but it was definitely stunt from big company to gain&#x2F;test good faith of the people without achieving nothing.<p>Still relevant: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26487854">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26487854</a>

Forced?

This can hardly be understood without knowing that in a number of cases, e.g. 90s hard disk configurations, you actually were required to set with switches which drive would act as &#x27;master&#x27; and which one as &#x27;slave&#x27;. This is offensive even a thousand miles away from being &#x27;woke&#x27;.<p>Personally I also take exception to things like the Unix &#x27;kill&#x27; command. You terminate a program, you don&#x27;t &#x27;kill&#x27; it. &#x27;Killing&#x27; is for living things, and it&#x27;s a one-time action. Programs are not alive, and I can restart them as I see fit.

I can’t tell if DHH means to prepare his audience for a conservative coming out announcement, or if these posts are just “no such thing as bad publicity” for niche products.<p>I never got around to renaming “master” to “main.” No one on the team complained or found it “problematic.” No woke police came around to force us. DHH must have higher sensitivity to social media than I do.