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Original time stamps were intentionally destroyed. From a comment by starfrost on the article: "The reason I cannot do timestamps is because data protection la

by LocalH 2y ago

Original time stamps were intentionally destroyed. From a comment by starfrost on the article: "The reason I cannot do timestamps is because data protection law mandates anonymisation of source files, at least that is the policy."

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
skissane 2y ago
I don’t think timestamps themselves are PII, they tell you when but not who. I think the problem is legal is demanding they edit the files to remove names of former employees, since that is PII - and doing so destroys the timestamps (and can damage the file format if not done carefully with respect to encodings etc) Simple solution: upload a DIR of the original floppies. That will tell us the original timestamps, without revealing that PII Advanced solution: someone create a toolkit for redacting disk images which records the exact byte locations redacted. The whole “former employee names are PII so we have to censor them” thing is a bit stupid, but sometimes you get further by doing the best you can within legal’s constraints instead of fighting them
- theoldlove 2y ago
  Seems weird to remove the names of former employees. What’s sensitive about that information? In lots of other industries people insist on proper credits acknowledging their work.
  - tomjakubowski 2y ago
    Personally I'd rather disavow at least 50% of the code I've shipped than take credit for it
  - skissane 2y ago
    All it takes is one person in legal over-reacting And getting this done is relying on the good will of the corporation, a lot of other corps will just say point-blank “No way”. The risk with pushing back against legal, even if they are overreacting, is the end result could be no more releases like this
  - 1970-01-01 2y ago
    It was common for MS to include credits, but only as an Easter egg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Easter_eggs_in_Microsoft_products#Windows https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Easter_eggs_in_Microso...
autoexec 2y ago
I'm not sure what 'anonymisation of source files' even entails. We know what the files are, and where they came from. I could see scrubbing comments for specific names or something but what more would accurate timestamps tell us except when the files were originally last modified? That information is useful for historical interest reasons but what are the risks? Anyone know what the data protection law is that requires this?
userbinator 2y ago
That makes zero sense. Why erase the timestamps, but from the other comments on the source release itself here on HN, there are still author's names and initials in the files? It's not like we don't know the people who wrote MS-DOS either.

by LocalH 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

skissane 2y ago

I don’t think timestamps themselves are PII, they tell you when but not who. I think the problem is legal is demanding they edit the files to remove names of former employees, since that is PII - and doing so destroys the timestamps (and can damage the file format if not done carefully with respect to encodings etc) Simple solution: upload a DIR of the original floppies. That will tell us the original timestamps, without revealing that PII Advanced solution: someone create a toolkit for redacting disk images which records the exact byte locations redacted. The whole “former employee names are PII so we have to censor them” thing is a bit stupid, but sometimes you get further by doing the best you can within legal’s constraints instead of fighting them

theoldlove 2y ago
Seems weird to remove the names of former employees. What’s sensitive about that information? In lots of other industries people insist on proper credits acknowledging their work.
- tomjakubowski 2y ago
  Personally I'd rather disavow at least 50% of the code I've shipped than take credit for it
- skissane 2y ago
  All it takes is one person in legal over-reacting And getting this done is relying on the good will of the corporation, a lot of other corps will just say point-blank “No way”. The risk with pushing back against legal, even if they are overreacting, is the end result could be no more releases like this
- 1970-01-01 2y ago
  It was common for MS to include credits, but only as an Easter egg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Easter_eggs_in_Microsoft_products#Windows https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Easter_eggs_in_Microso...

autoexec 2y ago

I'm not sure what 'anonymisation of source files' even entails. We know what the files are, and where they came from. I could see scrubbing comments for specific names or something but what more would accurate timestamps tell us except when the files were originally last modified? That information is useful for historical interest reasons but what are the risks? Anyone know what the data protection law is that requires this?

userbinator 2y ago

That makes zero sense. Why erase the timestamps, but from the other comments on the source release itself here on HN, there are still author's names and initials in the files? It's not like we don't know the people who wrote MS-DOS either.