Subject: Re: [bug#76407] [GCD] Rename the default branch

From: Ekaitz Zarraga <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2025 18:06:37 +0100

First of all Andreas, thanks for your thoughtful message.

It seems like you pretty much agree with what I shared, including the 
association you make with the name master ("maestro" for me, which could 
be a teacher, or a person that excels in something, but also the first 
original-essential work you use for others (production molds, pillars in 
buildings and so on).

In any case, it's not our association what we are considering but the 
association a possible minority (which I argue that it may not exist) 
may have (which I argue it may be fabricated by the fact some people 
decided the word "master" was offensive).

Btw, the other day I was informed that the University of Southern 
California's School of Social Work removed the "field" work from their 
curriculum because it may have racist connotations related to slavery. I 
think the "master" case is the same. The only difference is "master" 
looks more like a natural change because we have too many voices telling 
us it is.

On 2025-03-26 13:21, Andreas Enge wrote:
> The negative connotations of the word "master" seem to come only from a
> US American viewpoint from the word pair "master"/"slave"; so from my
> point of view, we are importing a US American culture war, by which I do
> not feel concerned, into our international project.
> Ekaitz writes: "the USA imperialism is forced upon me."
> Even before reading his words, I essentially felt the same. Maybe we
> could call it "US American cultural dominance" to be a bit more neutral.
> We are already expected to communicate in English (while I may regret
> that Latin has gone out of fashion, I must admit that English is just
> the most practical solution right now). We are expected to use
> US American spelling. Now we consider pandering to US American
> sensitivities with respect to their history on how we name our branches.
> (As far as I understand, the author of the proposal is not from the USA,
> but this does not invalidate the argument about cultural dominance.)
> All this is somewhat ironic: We start by using a language that is foreign
> to many or probably even most of us, and end up being expected to share
> also the cultural connotations linked to that language (in a particular
> part of the world) that would not pose a problem if we had used a
> different language from the start.

But this is something I wanted to highlight, that I think we are kind of 
avoiding discussing. It's not that it is forced upon us only, it's that 
we should, in my opinion, prevent that from happening because Guix is of 
all people, including those that are "cultural enemies" of the USA 
(because of their own reasons or because the cultural context where they 
had the chance to be raised in). And they are already doing a huge 
effort to be here, an effort US Americans don't need to do.

I'd rather make software for the majority of the world, than only for 
those that feel comfortable with the US American eccentricities.

This includes *people* in Iran, Russia, North Korea, China (just for 
mentioning some) and the rest of the globe. The world is too large, and 
it's crowded.

If we want to make *people* (not just *some* people) feel comfortable, 
we should take a look to the broad picture and stop looking at our own 
belly button (spanish idiom :) ).

The name of the branch is the color of the bikeshed, I agree with you 
all. I'd prefer if the discussion wasn't put in the terms of "which of 
the colors of the US American flag do we want to use to paint it".

Because if there's no possibility to discuss the very core of this 
proposition, that's how it sounds to me, and I'm not particularly a 
hater of the USA. I cannot even imagine how could this all sound to others.

Being clear, changing the branch name to please US American sensibility 
may be counterproductive, those that might feel underrepresented in Guix 
(and probably in (free-) software development) might see how we lean 
towards a worldview that is too far from theirs. No surprise that some 
countries use their own software ecosystem. I don't like to work only 
for less than a quarter of the planet. I think people from any place in 
the world deserves this work, and those who we are trying to please are 
the ones that need it the less.

This I wanted to point out when I proposed putting the Palestinian flag 
in the Guix website. I'm sure that I didn't make people think as much as 
I expected to, because this conversation was more confrontational than 
anything. But please think about it again. We cannot pretend that a 
discussion like that one would be only positive for the project, like I 
think this GCD does. There is a possible negative outcome, for example, 
that those who think that is unfair (maybe because they grew up watching 
missiles falling in their city) leave the project. We can agree or 
disagree, but that is a possibility and we should be empathetic enough 
to understand it and predict it the same way we try to predict the 
negative outcomes of our technical decisions.

I think my previous messages were understood as I was opposing the 
change just because I'm a free-speech absolutist (heh) or an 
anti-"woke". It's not the change what I oppose, I reject its terms, and 
the premises it is proposed on top of, which I think are simply 
counterproductive in a way that is not even contemplated in the document.

And if you wish, strictly speaking on the document. It describes 
potential social benefits using heavy loaded words ("harmful", "racist", 
"sexist") but it doesn't list any social drawback. That's more than 
enough to understand how biased the proposal is (it's just so obvious!) 
and how difficult that is to argue against. The belligerence this has 
been defended with doesn't help much to try to understand the answers it 
got.

I could say mea culpa a for my part, maybe my wording wasn't the best, 
but I don't think my previous arguments were really listened to, simply 
because the rename *is the right thing to do*.

I don't know if Simon's question "are we really looking for consensus 
here?" was pointed to me, but I've been trying to. Maybe poorly, 
addressing the core issues of the proposal, and saying, probably we 
shouldn't have even started it.

I hope this speaks more clearly about what I said before.

Best,
Ekaitz