this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025
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The default branch for some projects is "production" since CD deploys on pushing to that branch
For new projects, main. My thought is that even if master is not offensive, since the industry has generally made the change, the only reason to stick with master is stubbornness or hating political correctness, neither of which aligns with my self-view so I'll use main and move on.
In general if people are genuinely hurt by the use of some words, I'm not sadistic so I'll avoid using them. From my perspective morality is the pursuit of the reduction of suffering, even if that suffering is internal.
It kills me that this take is so hard to find online.
Did I think calling the main branch “master” was offensive before this controversy? No, I’d never even considered it.
Does switching to calling it “main” impact me, like… at all? Also no. It’s like the lowest effort change to make.
If I can make my industry more welcoming to a more diverse group of people, that is a solid victory and way more important than the name of my primary git branch.
I mean, the problem people have with it isn't a name change or improving inclusivity. It's the fact that they feel like they are being bullied into doing something they had no input into in the name of inclusivity. What pisses people off is how, as soon as someone says "x" isn't maximally inclusive of some marginalized group, everyone has to change or else get called a categorically bad person.
For example, suppose you have a red hat that you enjoy wearing. You got it at wafflefest a decade ago, and it says "I <3 Waffles". Then one day, your boss sends out an email that no more red hats are allowed in the office because it might create an unwelcoming environment. You will, of course, be pissed off. Not because you can't wear your waffle hat anymore, but because your boss feels entitled to control the minutiae of you life like this. You'll think to yourself "fuck that guy, and fuck whoever brought up banning red hats in some corporate board room 1000 miles away. This is bullshit!"
People like their autonomy, and don't like being controlled. Doesn't matter if it is in the name of increased corporate profits, or inclusivity, or saving the bees, or dying of lung cancer. They don't care about the name of their git branch - they care that they feel like they are being forced to change it.
That analogy doesn't really apply though. The decision to change master to main was a collective one, not made by "some corporate board room 1000 miles away". It may feel like that's how it went down because you only noticed when GitHub changed their defaults or whatever, but that decision was not made in a vacuum, it was the result of lots of people saying "hey, this is a problem, let's fix it" for a long time before any actions were taken.
No one is offended by that word, at some point we need to stop wasting time on pointless debates and move on. If I start tweeting that I find "main" offensive are we going to have to find another name?
Don’t forget laziness. I have some projects that have been around forever and I am not changing it across my infra because I am lazy. I will do it next year…
Do you have any evidence that "the industry" has made the change? My personal experience says the opposite. Unless you mean "new repositories use the new default name" which says more about people simply not caring rather than anything else.
That's a sane position. Only issue is that this have nothing to do with the question, and the people that were the most vocal about this issue had no business talking about it in the first place.
Ultimately, git is flexible; beyond some potential local and shared automation, anyone can call their local branches however they want, regardless of other and servers. Personally, changing years of habits and tooling (that probably should not have hardcoded some names in the first place) is not worth following a change proposed by misled people.