Just realised how often when working on some code I will try to contact the original author based on git blame... but in the future, a lot of those people won't be around anymore. I think we usually take for granted that people working on the same project will be here - but in a couple of years "anyone who worked on this module still alive?" may be depressingly more common. Not even from the development perspective, but working on the same thing as someone who's not alive anymore. Apart from long-term or famous construction projects, I can't think of many non-art places where the author is preserved in the history so permanently as in a source version control.
Not to detract from the work that this man (or anyone else) has done, but it's very rare for code to survive for very long without an active maintainer before it succumbs to code rot.
Either someone else steps up to the plate and actively maintains the software, or something else will replace it. Source control makes it easier to revisit the past, but it doesn't ensure that the past will continue to stay current.
