[gdpr-discuss] Git and the Right for Rectification

[Jonas Wielicki]

On Montag, 21. Mai 2018 17:57:42 CEST Winfried Tilanus wrote:
> Git has the pressing need of
> maintaining code integrity and traceability. The final decision will be
> up to a judge, but my bets are on the need of maintaining the code.
> Something similar will be the case with Bugzilla.

So I was wondering about Git and the Right for Rectification. In contrast to 
the Right to be Forgotten, the Right for Rectification, does not have any 
exceptions I am aware of.

Now what if somebody commits code to a Git repository (so the commit includes 
their name and email address) and they change for example email addresses. In 
that case, from my understanding, the Right for Rectification would trigger 
and the controller of the Git repository may be forced to rectify the 
information.

This would require re-writing all history since that commit, which is a huge 
issue.

One argument against that which I heard that:

- The email address was valid at the time the commit was made and is thus an 
accurate representation of the history at the time the commit was made (which 
is timestamped) and thus doesn’t need to be rectified.

- It is expected that the user would provide accurate information and if they, 
for example, have a typo in e.g. their name in the commit metadata, it is kind 
of their fault and this does not need to be corrected.

Do these counter-arguments make sense or is this a real threat to Git?

kind regards,
Jonas
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