For open source projects, that's less of an option, but regardless, an individual's opinions about tabs and spaces are moot when working on a multi-dev project. You follow the project's conventions, or your changes don't get merged.
Yes it is frustrating that git doesn't automatically transfer hooks to cloned repos. I guess I understand the standard explanation of "git clone" never running arbitrary code on one's machine (although in a sense that is git's purpose), but it does reduce the use of client-side hooks in open projects.