Out of curiosity, could I legitimately ask Google, GitHub, etc. under the GDPR to delete my name in the AUTHORS file of the git commit it was added in when I contributed to Chrome's v8 engine 10 years ago? Would they have to comply if I did?
Obviously, removing the commit would break git's ability to sign any hashes for that repository after that point…
And thinking it through a bit more, what about the companies that use v8? Could I ask my regulator to get Joyent to remove it from their systems? I'm sure they have copies…
Data structure has nothing to do with it. If you stored social media users as fake AUTHORS lines in a git repo, that still wouldn't make you allowed to keep it. In the inverse situation, storing git authorship in the comments table of your photo site's database, you would be allowed to keep it for legal uses.
I interpreted the original posters point that the git repository could not be modified without destroying it. I thought that's how the next poster was responding to it. If you cannot modify an old entry without destroying the integrity of your system, are you required to modify? Either the answer is yes and you effectively cannot use certain data structures (with their integrity) or the answer is no and certain data structures allow you to keep data.
I agree and understand, but it does give us a likely unintended consequence: no sequential hashed data structures when you are required to be able to modify it. Probably a good thing for hearing less about blockchains!
That's not really relevant. GDPR doesn't ask people to forget things out of their minds.
So let's rephrase to a more relevant example:
> if yoi provide me your birthday on a web form and I put it in a database how can i forget it?
This now becomes relevant, and easy do answer. You delete it.