LGTM

LGTM. Do we even want AUTHORS.txt now? Between the log and the .mailmap it seems like we have all the info we need.

AUTHORS.txt is much nicer than pointing people to the raw data.

How about – https://github.com/jquery/jquery/graphs/contributors? Although author list 224 people, whereas github shows only 100 (no more than 100?)

This is a matter of presentation. Obviously, all contributor info is in the repo & AUTHORS.txt can always be re-generated.

While most non-jQuery projects I know don't have a dedicated AUTHORS.txt file, I can see how this can work as an incentive to contribute & get one's name in the easily readable file. Whether it's important enough to keep the file, I don't know.

While many projects don't maintain an AUTHORS file, it's certainly done by a fair amount of projects. A quick check shows that node, polymer, and grunt do the same.