Sure, it's a terrible feature to always use. And it's likely to be of little use to contributors who know how to use Git well. But in large open-source project

Sure, it's a terrible feature to always use. And it's likely to be of little use to contributors who know how to use Git well. But in large open-source projects, often new contributors make a small change that needs a few minor corrections. Eliminating that final back-and-forth ("squash please") is a huge win for maintainers.