diff --git a/docs/manual/repo.md b/docs/manual/repo.md
index c23a4453..6e307ba3 100644
--- a/docs/manual/repo.md
+++ b/docs/manual/repo.md
@@ -58,10 +58,11 @@ comparing timestamps. For Git, the logical choice is to not mess with
 timestamps, because unnecessary rebuilding is better than a broken tree.
 However, OSTree has to hardlink files to check them out, and commits are assumed
 to be internally consistent with no build steps needed. For this reason, OSTree
-acts as though all timestamps are set to time_t 1, so that comparisons will be
-considered up-to-date. 1 is a better choice than 0 because some programs use 0
-as a special value; for example, GNU Tar warns of an "implausibly old time
-stamp" with 0.
+acts as though all timestamps are set to time_t 0, so that comparisons will be
+considered up-to-date.  Note that for a few releases, OSTree used 1 to fix
+warnings such as GNU Tar emitting "implausibly old time stamp" with 0; however,
+until we have a mechanism to transition cleanly to 1, for compatibilty OSTree
+is reverted to use zero again.
 
 # Repository types and locations
 
diff --git a/src/libostree/ostree-repo-private.h b/src/libostree/ostree-repo-private.h
index 92d8a084..e8d5550f 100644
--- a/src/libostree/ostree-repo-private.h
+++ b/src/libostree/ostree-repo-private.h
@@ -32,7 +32,7 @@ G_BEGIN_DECLS
 #define _OSTREE_SUMMARY_CACHE_DIR "summaries"
 #define _OSTREE_CACHE_DIR "cache"
 
-#define OSTREE_TIMESTAMP (1)
+#define OSTREE_TIMESTAMP (0)
 
 typedef enum {
   OSTREE_REPO_TEST_ERROR_PRE_COMMIT = (1 << 0)
diff --git a/tests/basic-test.sh b/tests/basic-test.sh
index c4828d90..9db56e77 100755
--- a/tests/basic-test.sh
+++ b/tests/basic-test.sh
@@ -392,9 +392,9 @@ else
     $OSTREE checkout test2 test2-checkout
 fi
 stat '--format=%Y' test2-checkout/baz/cow > cow-mtime
-assert_file_has_content cow-mtime 1
+assert_file_has_content cow-mtime 0
 stat '--format=%Y' test2-checkout/baz/deeper > deeper-mtime
-assert_file_has_content deeper-mtime 1
+assert_file_has_content deeper-mtime 0
 echo "ok content mtime"
 
 cd ${test_tmpdir}