>
> Actually, it's only the lines that remain in the end result
> that matter.  Usually it's pretty much the same as the sum of the lines
> of all commits, but sometimes it's less because some of that code was
> later removed/replaced.
>

For those who have not had a look at the source of this is yet, here it is:

https://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/maintain.html#Legally-Significant