On open systems (as in system theory)

+ /* Parse base-64 output produced only by tar test versions + 1.13.6 (1999-08-11) through 1.13.11 (1999-08-23). + Support for this will be withdrawn in future releases. */

Paul Eggert. Diff to list.c. GNU tar. line 611. 1999 September 22. Retrieved 2009 September 21, from http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/tar.git/commit/?id=e4e62484...

How serendipitous it is that after recalling this curious comment in GNU tar, re-retrieving it for my own personal notes, tracking down the diff, and scrutinizing the dates rather than glossing over them reveals that this was added one decade ago. So I thought I'd share.

Bugger. This was my first post to HN, and I just took a look at the approach to comments (which doesn't appear on the submission page...), and it appears this is "shallowly interesting".