The Software Heritage Archive has archived a piece of software I wrote, the Unicode-fixer ftfy. This software, which I've released several versions of under my correct name, is in use at a crap-ton of tech companies. The Software Heritage Archive recognizes that it's a relevant piece of 21st-century software history, and wants to preserve it forever.
Unfortunately, their archive that they want to preserve forever buries my correct version under 70 trivial forks by other people, like things they just made to open a pull request, which call me by my deadname.
I asked Software Heritage to fix this, first by chatting with one of their developers on Twitter, then by applying the GDPR because they are part of a French organization. Here's a very paraphrased and informal summary of how it went:
Me: Here's an exact list of useless forks of my code you've archived that call me by my deadname. Can you fix or remove them?
Dev: What? No. You can't just change things like that. We have to maintain the integrity of software history
Me: Integrity is calling trans developers by their names and not deadnaming them
Dev: I feel for you and I support trans rights, but we literally can't change this data
Me: Whyever not
Other dev: updates the site's Content Policy to say they can't change names because they put them all in a blockchain
Me: Excuse me, you put my deadname in a fucking blockchain?
Other dev: quietly changes the Content Policy again
Dev: We don't use blockchains, why would you think we use blockchains? It's a Merkle tree, just like GitHub history, so it can never be changed.
Me: I did change my GitHub history.
Dev: What
Me: git-filter-repo, baybee
Dev: (ghosts me)
Me: hello Data Protection Officer, here's a Right to Rectify request
(no response for a month)
Me: bonjour Data Protection Officer, here's an extremely formal Right to Rectify request in French
DPO: Can we store your deadname forever and apply a cosmetic fix to our frontend that replaces your deadname with your real name?
Me: Absolutely not
DPO: We're sorry that we're unable to meet your request
Me: it's a GDPR request and you're in France, you kinda have to
(no response for 6 months)
Me: bonjour, Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés. Here's a pile of evidence that Inria, owners of Software Heritage, refused a lawful GDPR request
Anyway, that's where we are now! fun times!
