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It's not public if the public can't read it (requires authorization).

Why is this a conversation?

Because you've applied a different definition of public that doesn't fit the context. Public in the context in which it was used in this thread regarding git commits simply means commits you have pushed to a repo that another developer can access even if authorization is required to access it.

That's not what public means, though, in any context.

What we are talking about is whether or not you should rewrite public history. The technical reason is based on the fact if others have access to this history or not.

It does not matter if you pushed it to a private repository where some other people still have access to; they might have fetched that history and committed on, which causes unexpected results when you rewrite such a branch.

I tend to use published history / commits for this reason to make it less confusing.

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