There is one part that is not a joke: some people worked really hard reporting bugs and helping to fix them during the Fremantle development phase. They did the work regardless on whether those bugfixes will eventually benefit N8*0 users or not.

The idea of distributing Fixed in Fremantle shirts came indeed as a joke at some point by someone maybe a year ago, or something like that. Then most people forgot about it but just a few... that decided to push the joke forward.

It is still unclear whether those bugfixes will end up applied to N8*0 hardware, we'll see. What is clear is that without the work of these bugsquatters the chances of even get them fixed for Fremantle would have been smaller.

Now, about the karma rankings. They have something to consider:

They carry the whole history. If you have been following bugzilla in 2009 you will realize that some names haven't been that active, or even not active at all, while other active contributors have been active but haven't accummulated enough karma to show up there.