In the case of git 'rewriting history' is not really the problem, and it leaves the old history intact (you cannot change git history, but you can create an alternative history).
The old history will possibly be garbage collected eventually, but for quite a while that history is still accessible.
I think the only missing piece is a simple (and obvious) client side 'undo/rollback that force push'.
The issue is that the git client may not have the history pre-force, so it may have insufficient information to do the rollback (at least in the current model), however the server still has all the refs (and they are listed in the reflog).
The old history will possibly be garbage collected eventually, but for quite a while that history is still accessible.
I think the only missing piece is a simple (and obvious) client side 'undo/rollback that force push'.
The issue is that the git client may not have the history pre-force, so it may have insufficient information to do the rollback (at least in the current model), however the server still has all the refs (and they are listed in the reflog).