GitHub will no longer use the term ‘master’ due to negative association

GitHub is going to retire the term ‘master’. The association with slavery is one that the Microsoft subsidiary does not want. What will replace the term doesn’t seem to be quite certain yet, but it seems to be becoming ‘main’.

GitHub CEO Nat Friedman let us know on Twitter. He responded to a call from a Chrome developer. “We are already working on it,” the man said. It is unknown when the change will be implemented. Many commenters note that this may mean going back to existing code and changing all references to master. Perhaps GitHub will only apply the change to new repositories.

In the comments, users claim that the use of master does not have to be in the context of master-slave. Instead, it could be a master copy from which branches can take place. Friedman has not commented on that.

GitLab also says it will give users the freedom to choose the default branch own name to give. Recently, the creators of the Redis database also announced that they are moving away from master-slave terminology. Python already did that in 2018.