https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49474708
I saw the argument that if OS maintainers "really care" about their projects, they would accept valid contributions regardless origin. Well, turn it around: if you really care so much about contributing, if you really just wanna HeLP, you don't need the credit. The warm fuzzy feeling that your contribution ended up being used should be enough.
I've heard this in a lot of places, don't have a way to verify this in action. Do you have any citation or just gut feel (still valid but less useful for me).
As for motive, it probably varies, though some will loudly put that they're some agent manager or something with lots of contributions, so you can guess their motivations there.
In other cases, these are instrad brand-new accounts which is a related but I guess slightly different story... not gonna say these are spam bot accounts being juiced with fake activity but well...
The problem is writing such an essay takes magnitudes more of an effort for people who are not native English (or whatever the language is in which discussions are done about the project) speakers.
Also, relatedly, essays written by non-native English speakers often get considered to be AI-written by common AI detection systems, even though no AI was involved when writing them; see for example
> I'm Kenyan. I Don't Write Like ChatGPT. ChatGPT Writes Like Me.
> https://marcusolang.substack.com/p/im-kenyan-i-dont-write-li...
They have a blog post on it if you look up “Pangram v4 System Card“