Likely because /net was done before the coding standard and by some 3rd party contributor -- and doing non-functional whitespace/formatting commits is a no-no in most large projects.

Linux kernel does have a lot of non-functional formatting commits. https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux....

These non-functional commits happen more in areas under active development, while established and inactive projects with less than enough watching eyes want to avoid this kind of non-essential changes.

Hunh? Try the staging: unisys: fix formatting in timskmod.h patch - e5700df52 [1]

    diff --git a/drivers/staging/unisys/include/timskmod.h b/drivers/staging/unisys/include/timskmod.h
    index b20fc9d..59144ba 100644
    --- a/drivers/staging/unisys/include/timskmod.h
    +++ b/drivers/staging/unisys/include/timskmod.h
    @@ -293,6 +293,7 @@ static inline struct cdev *cdev_alloc_init(struct module *owner,
     					   const struct file_operations *fops)
     {
     	struct cdev *cdev = NULL;
    +
     	cdev = cdev_alloc();
     	if (!cdev)
     		return NULL;

(This commit just happened to be the only one I peeked at from the link above - and is particularly apropos)

1. https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux....

well i stand corrected it seems. although if that is from staging, then it will likely get squashed before merged into mainline (meaning this commit won't actually stay in the history).

Staging is an exception. Staging is a place to put low-quality drivers developed outside the Linux kernel community, to be fixed to Linux kernel standards before being moved into the normal tree. One of the many things done to a driver in staging is to fix the source code formatting. The commits won't get squashed, since it's part of the mainline git repository, which is never squashed.

So yeah, on staging you can expect to see lots of non-functional changes, mixed with functional changes.

If style issues are missed in FreeBSD before commit they're graciously accepted afterwards from what I've witnessed

Taking in large contributions that violate style(9) is a really bad idea, though.