I don't know the history of who started the master/main debate. if it was a bunch of white people trying to show how progressive they were while black programmers were like "yeah, we don't care", then it's virtue signaling. If it was the black programmers being like "this phrase feels weird to us... can we change it?" .. then it's not virtue signalling, it's listening to underrepresented voices. I legitimately don't know which scenario it is. I'm also not in a position where the word bothers me at all, but I also have an easy life, and if someone tells me a word used in a certain way feels weird and I can resolve that with 0 effort (ie, switch new projects to main), I will.

And of course about the retroactive changing, which is why I said I wouldn't expect linux to change.