--- title: "Forcing master to main was a good faith exploit" url: https://daily.dev/posts/forcing-master-to-main-was-a-good-faith-exploit-ajulo1hry source_url: https://world.hey.com/dhh/forcing-master-to-main-was-a-good-faith-exploit-b21ee30c type: article source: "David Heinemeier Hansson" published: 2024-04-15T13:47:50.708Z updated: 2024-05-09T08:20:02.615Z tags: ["cyber", "firewall"] reading_time: 1 upvotes: 38 comments: 29 language: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Forcing master to main was a good faith exploit **[David Heinemeier Hansson](https://daily.dev/sources/dhh)** · 1 min read · 38 upvotes · 29 comments ## Summary The author was tricked by an exploit that manipulated good faith but eventually found a patch to fix the vulnerability. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@randy** · 16 upvotes > Yep. My defaults in GitHub are all `master`. There's nothing racist about it. It's the right word. "Main" does not describe its use correctly. It's also confusing for Java devs (and even Python, I'd think) where the starting method of an application is `main()`. > > We have one oddball project where I work that uses `main` and I've half a mind to change it... **@yaireo** · 6 upvotes > I am used to `master` as this has been the term for hard-drives also for decades. > > Also *"master key"* and "master bedroom" and master-many-things. > > Should people start searching everywhere for words related to racism and replace the whole language? > > It's an endless war against what exactly? who is is getting hurt by the term "master" and how many of those really exist to justify all this... **@notplancha** · 6 upvotes > clickbait at its worst. it's impressive how this guy's blog is consistently the worst one on this platform **@pboling** · 5 upvotes > This is nonsense. What exploit is he talking about? Main is fewer characters to type, and I prefer it on that basis alone, but i did not see any discussion of an exploit. **@sbourgeois** · 4 upvotes > Did someone actually really think that switching master to main would do a difference in the world ? That whole war was ridiculous, and the result is... Well, ridiculous as well. ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Don’t just attend KubeCon \+ CloudNativeCon, Merge Forward your experience\!](https://daily.dev/posts/don-t-just-attend-kubecon-cloudnativecon-merge-forward-your-experience--l0rpp73x8) · CNCF · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Announcing H2 2026 KCDs](https://daily.dev/posts/announcing-h2-2026-kcds-m96goajm1) · CNCF · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Two months of Open Community Groups](https://daily.dev/posts/two-months-of-open-community-groups-asf52zhbs) · CNCF · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#cyber](https://daily.dev/tags/cyber), [#firewall](https://daily.dev/tags/firewall) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/forcing-master-to-main-was-a-good-faith-exploit-ajulo1hry)