and partly because Andrew Morton was getting a lot of patches attributed that didn't really belong to him. The counts for akpm patches in that first 10 are:
So about 25% of 2.6.1 and 2.6.2, and much less in the later releases.
(A quick look shows that the first few releases have several patches with
>>>> From: NeilBrown <neilb@cse.unsw.edu.au>
in the comment, but:
>>>> Author: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
so I figure I should be in the exclusive "41-club" too!!)