Re: [PATCH] format-patch: add support for mailmap file

> I've had a few cases where I was formatting an old commit. The example
> in this case was a change made to an internal tree by one author quite
> some time ago. In the meantime, that person has left the company, and
> his company address is no longer valid. We still typically put the
> original author on such a patch in order to give them credit even if
> they're no longer on our team when sending the change, as patches are
> made by people, not companies :)
> 
> If we left the address alone, it would cause a bounce on the mailing
> list if it gets included in the cc. In some cases, the upstream project
> mailmap already includes a mapping from their old company address to
> their current public address.
> 
> The internal tree commits are already baked and can't be changed. We can
> of course fix the generated patches from these commits manually. It
> seemed convenient to get mailmap to do this for us.