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Comment by renewiltord | Hacker News Reader

This is rough, no? Sort of a ticking time bomb in any large repo. If someone wants to have zero association you've got to remove their PII, but if you do that you rewrite the commit graph and no past commit will work.

That's really placing people in a tough situation. Oof.

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There’s nothing at all that forces the Rust organization to remove their name and email address.

Personally, I don’t think that people should even ask to be removed like that. Sure, if someone wants to leave then the project should avoid implying that they are still an active member, but asking them to make it look like you never _were_ a member is going too far.

You don't actually have to remove it if it's not technically feasible. It's not like it was illegally collected there.

I really hate how metadata of git commits is immutable though. I've often wanted to make a small change like fix a typo in a description, only to find out it's impossible.

Of course it's technically feasible. You do the filter-branch thing and then you force-push.

Sure, it would be very inconvenient for everybody who has a clone of the repo, but I don't think that's a convincing argument to a nation state trying to enforce regulations.

I think that doesn't actually remove you from the GitHub contributors list. I had used the wrong identity for a commit and tried all manners of git manipulation and force push, but GitHub kept me on the list. In the end I just nuked that account.

Edit: Apparently renaming branches and reverting that works: https://stackoverflow.com/a/69294044

Ah, I didn't think of it at all, I was only thinking about a hypothetical responsibility of whoever is in charge of the git repository, not the extra github flavoring.

If it's GDPR you're referring to, I think these bits of Article 17 (right to be forgotten) are relevant:

""" Paragraphs 1 and 2 shall not apply to the extent that processing is necessary:

...

(d) for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes in accordance with Article 89(1) in so far as the right referred to in paragraph 1 is likely to render impossible or seriously impair the achievement of the objectives of that processing; or

(e) for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims.

"""

Aren't there legal reasons you need to keep some information for copyright?

Yes, even if a project does copyright assignment they still need to keep a record of who assigned their copyright and for what.

Are there legal reason the information has to be kept in the Github repo? Maybe the Rust foundation could keep it in a PDF on some office computer somewhere.

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