[bcherny]

What about them?

[rilut]

He committed:

- Removing one whitespace and adding an unnecessary file https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/commit/98272b9752b2d505f7...

- Conflicted files https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/commit/63a69d9e2e9c31baab...

- Personal build env https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/commit/d57ff74f36c5b79d82...

- Deleted the whole project while changing cloud provider https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/commit/a242fb8d605d9aa4af...

- then re-adding the whole project again https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/commit/ddaaa09785d453e415...

and other weird/careless commits

[enitihas]

Now, he shows up at number 4 in the Github contributor list (https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/graphs/contributors) with 179,603 lines added, not a single one of which seems to be a meaningful contribution by him.

Are such incidences common in other open source software too, or does this one seem a rare case?

[micimize]

I doubt it, but the line count / commit frequency heuristics really shouldn't be taken too seriously anyways

[ollysb]

Make of it what you will but they appear to be a bunch of commits that amount to removing white space or adding/removing comments with messages like "Code refactoring". It looks a lot like someone trying to get their git blame count up by any means other than writing actual code.