[palata]

> In that case, why should the commit history be the place to go?

In my experience with open source projects, the history is very much where I go. Say I read some code and don't understand a line (say it is weird, but it does not feel like complete garbage because the rest of the code is actually good), then I will definitely `git blame` or even start digging in the history to see where that line comes from.

Good commit messages have saved me more than once in that situation. It doesn't have to be a whole essay, but something meaningful. Something like "apparently Travis CI wants two white spaces here" is already useful: it says that back then, they used a CI called "Travis" and it required that weird extra space. Now I feel safe removing it because the project does not rely on Travis anymore. (For example).

Note: it could be in a comment. But comments rot, move, get out of sync, disappear. It's much harder to check all the revisions of a file in the last 7 years to look for a potential comment on another line than it is to find the commits that actually edited the line of code.