> What does this mean? How would it link to their main account in anyway, regardless of this request?

Git adds some author information to each commit [1]. You can set those values project by project, and you can also set them globally.

To set a name and email to default to on all repos, you'd do this:

`git config --global user.name "Topsoil"` `git config --global user.email "[email protected]"`

To set different committer info for a repo, you'd run the same commands without the `--global` flag while in the root directory of the project.

When this person got re-interested in their project, they decided to squash all the commits into one new commit, but forgot to change their name and email on the repo and as a result exposed their real identity when they published the code on GitHub.

I had to look up what f-list was, and it seems to be some kind of furry role-playing community? (i didn't do any research other than briefly looking at the first page of google) so i understand why this person DCMA'd themself.

[1] https://git-scm.com/docs/git-commit#_commit_information

I recently learned, that you're able to switch the git user dynamically based on the folder the repository resides in, by using the includeif directive in your gitconfig. [1]

This is very useful, if you have separate accounts, for example a business and a personal account.

[1] https://gist.github.com/Icaruk/f024a18093dc28ec1588cfb90efc3...

I also recently learned this... just now. Thanks for sharing.

GitHub identifies commits only by their associated email addresses, and it is easy to manipulate them. This has a consequence that anyone can masquerade as any others.[1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10005577

“zmessenger-dev” is, I believe, the “alt account” they lost the login info to. Their main account, presumably tied to their identity, was used to author a commit that was pushed the DMCA’d repo. They later lost access to the alt (zmessenger) and so cannot remove the repo.

This is possible since GitHub attributes commits to certain accounts based on the email that authors the commit, so they used an email tied to their main account to author the commit. Only the email is actually attached to the commit though, GitHub just associates the account based on a lookup. They then push the commit to the repo using their ssh or password authentication for zmessenger, which they later lose, and so they can no longer alter the repository and remove the offending commit/email

They may not have changed their git email when committing from the looks of it.

Which could be associated with them.