[llvm-dev] Inclusive language in LLVM: can we rename `master` branch?

[Roman Lebedev via llvm-dev]

On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:49 PM Mehdi AMINI via llvm-dev
<llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> When we moved to GitHub a few months ago, we used without more consideration the "master" convention to name our development branch. On SVN it used to be just "trunk".
> This naming is unfortunate as it can hurt some contributors, and there is really no technical advantage that I know of to favor this convention over another.
>
> I am perfectly aware that `master` has other significations than the master/slave meaning, and I personally never made this association in the past. However I'm also able to recognize that I'm privileged here, and that not everyone is in the same position.
>
> As we intend to be an inclusive community, I propose that we change the name of our development branch and that we adopt instead a more neutral terminology for the LLVM monorepo. Possible names are "dev", "trunk", "main", "default", ...

While we're at it, I strongly urge to also deal with the words "work"/"job".

As one can easily fact-check, in Russian (slavic?) language,
for example, the word "Worker" can be translated as "Работник", "Рабочий".
Similarly the word "Job" can be translated as "Работа".
As you may notice, they all contain "Раб", which, as you can easily
check, literally translates to "slave".
It doesn't seem very inclusive to me to use words with such dubious origin..

> We need to plan a transition as all the bots will need to be updated to track this new branch instead, but these are minor technical details, nothing compared to the SVN->Git migration we went through.
>
> Since I'm on this topic, we should also likely look into the pervasive use of whitelist/blacklist in the project.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> --
> Mehdi
Roman.

> _______________________________________________
> LLVM Developers mailing list
> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org
> https://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev