Yes, local is the wrong word. Or rather, it's imprecise. A better word is unshared. But even that is imprecise, because you might consider pushing a set of comm

Yes, local is the wrong word. Or rather, it's imprecise. A better word is unshared. But even that is imprecise, because you might consider pushing a set of commits to the Internet as sharing. Maybe an even better word is collaborate. I don't rewrite history of source code that I am collaborating with someone else on. For example, the history on master never gets re-written. But that feature branch I pushed to get review before being merged? Absolutely. I'll rewrite its history without a second thought before it gets merged. It doesn't matter what source control system you hand me. It could be your ideally perfect system. I would still rewrite history that I'm not collaborating with others on. I try treat source history (as much as is practical) as a sequence of logical changes to the code. I treat it like I treat the code. I try to optimize for making it intelligible and understandable to other humans (including myself). You can look at any of my projects on GitHub for examples.