[ajross]

That is because of the desire for the kernel to be able to prove authorship (i.e. that it wasn't "stolen" code that got committed).

This is a Google commit, it's not owned by the author. Clearly Google owns the copyright, it was done at Google's direction and for reasons that are relatively obvoiusly in line with Google's interests. There's no meaningful ambiguity here.

Corporations donate code all the time, even to Linux, and the "true" human author doesn't necessarily correlate with the names on the git commit. This is no different.

Fundamentally this is just a joke. Anyone who put their name on that commit would open themselves up to ridicule, so the project management lampshaded the issue with a faceless commit.

So, yes, the same reasoning applies to Android. And this is perfectly fine. There are things to complain about, but IP hygine doesn't qualify.

[DennisAleynikov]

Yeah it's definitely not a big issue that this is commited under Anonymous Coward since you know the decision was made by Google to axe this and it would matter very little which engineer specifically removed these lines of code.

[mikekchar]

Yeah, the requirement for an identifiable entity in order to merge code is ass covering and nothing more. They want to know who the author is in case of copyright infringement. In that case they can say, "If you want to sue someone, sue them. They claimed that they were able to merge this code." There's no legal requirement to do this; it's just a good idea.

You can allow random people to merge code into your repository, but if there is a legal problem, expect people to knock on your door. As you say, in the case of the Android change, it's obvious that the commit is anonymous on purpose.

[jacobush]

They will always knock at your door, but you have anon contributors, you can't point any fingers.

[jdbernard]

Which means you can't pass the responsibility along. Without someone else to point the finger at you will be left holding the bag if the anonymous committer committed stolen, copyrighted code.