This is indeed the silliest debate.

I used the term master for years, never really thought about it. I think I assumed it was referring to a master key (from which other keys are copied), rather than anything to do with ownership of people.

Then some people felt offended by it because they interpreted it differently than I did.

So… I changed the word I used. Like, it was the easiest thing in the world to do. “Main” is fine too, rolls right off the tongue, and if it happens to make a group of people feel less discriminated against than that’s all the motivating I need.

I also changed my repos as I updated them. It was like two commands and maybe a couple of lines in a CI config file. Trivial, even for dozens of them.

Today I wonder what the big deal is. If it really is “just a word”, well… so is main. Both words. If the one we’re using isn’t actually important then why resist changing it?

Seems to me like active resistance is kind of an indicator that maybe it really was about the word all along.