I believe it is appropriate to view project.el to have two different focuses here: one for the general idea and one minor mode (overloaded term, I know...) for vc.

To help the out of the box experience with the project-vc I think either:

- adding common patterns to project-vc-ignores instead of nil, to accommodate for improperly configured .gitignore

- simply adding documentation emphasizing project-vcs reliance on .gitignore

As such it could be neither project nor project-vc responsibility to add the plain version. 

Will project.el be split at some point? I mean moving vc things to vc. 

I for one (maybe only one) find the scope of project.el a bit confusing

Theo