Hi, I have an idea about enabling management of authorship info in a git repo, to make it easier to manage and potentially remove author/committer/tagger PII (in the context of GDPR), without having to change any commit history/SHAs. Apologies if this has been brought up before, but I failed to find anything relevant from some quick searches: - https://lore.kernel.org/git/?q=indirect+authors - https://lore.kernel.org/git/?q=authors+file - https://lore.kernel.org/git/?q=people+file Potential use cases: - Someone requests that their names and email addresses be removed from a public repo's history under GDPR Right to be Forgotten (although, based on [1], it's not clear if projects could be forced to do honour RTBF or not) - Someone requests that their legal name change be reflected in a public repo I am interested in hearing your thoughts on this basic idea: - On committing/tagging/creating a note, the identity of the author is not saved in the commit etc. object itself but in a separate file e.g. `.git/people`: `d0efaf97-e18a-4197-b2c0-61c05efec75e <-> Yawar Amin <yawar.amin@xxxxxxxxx>` - Instead of the real identity of the author, a pointer to the `people` file entry is stored e.g. `Author: d0efaf97-e18a-4197-b2c0-61c05efec75e` - If an entry for the person already exists in the `people` file, it is reused - When syncing with a remote repo, new entries in the `people` file are synced along with other objects (in an append-only manner, not editing existing entries) - Git uses the `people` file to cross-reference and fill in authorship info when it renders commit etc. objects like in `git log`, `git show` etc. - If git can't find the authorship info in the `people` file it renders some appropriate default e.g. `(Unknown)` Project owners (with write access to the hosted repo) are able to edit and push changes to the `people` file. In this way they can fulfill change requests like the ones I mentioned above. Regards, Yawar [1] https://www.dataprotection.ie/en/individuals/know-your-rights/right-erasure-articles-17-19-gdpr
