Starting in October 2020, all new source code repositories created on GitHub have a primary branch named main instead of master as part of the company’s effort to remove unnecessary references to slavery and replace them with more inclusive terms. This “fix forward first” approach is the first step in making systemic changes to the naming conventions.

Github will also gradually rename their own internal repositories over time. This reflects the difficulty that Github and other organizations face – it’s hard to rename something that is in active use.

Hard, but not impossible, and it’s the right thing to do. We at the Stargate project are following suit. We’ll use main as the name of our primary branch going forward, and we are actively renaming existing primary branches to be named main. The Docs repo is the first to get renamed. Others will follow. We can’t let inertia be an impediment. We want our work on Stargate to be open, transparent, and inclusive. This is a necessary step to align with the virtue of inclusivity.