Thanks Goffi,

I would second this. Apart from the non-technical motivation: the XSF's repos are one of the only ones that I still use that use 'master' rather than 'main'. Where my muscle memory previously disliked 'main', it now dislikes 'master'.

We would be far from the first to apply such a change. Tooling has matured well over the years to make the change pretty easy. I hope that this helps to take away most concerns that are of a technical nature.

Kind regards,

Guus

On Tue, Jun 10, 2025 at 12:16 PM Goffi <goffi@goffi.org> wrote:

Hello dear XSF Members,

I see that we are still using "master" as the name of the main branch on Git
repositories (here, for instance: https://github.com/xsf/xeps ).

You are probably all aware that the use of this term has raised controversy in
recent years, as it can be perceived as a reference to slavery (see https://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%E2%80%93slave_(technology)#Controversy for
instance).

To avoid this unwanted reference and ensure the XSF is welcoming to everyone,
I propose that we change these branch names to "main," as many notable
projects have done (such as Python, the Linux Kernel, or GitHub).

I'm not sure whether this matter should be discussed in the Board or Council
(as it is a technical issue), but it would be good to add it to the agenda.

Thank you!
Goffi