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.
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.