Had a quick playaround with it:
- Yes, that does prevent gitignore files from being committed.
- It does not prevent locally-created gitignore files from being applied.
But I'd say the latter is overall a good thing, as some build tools will do a echo "*" > build/.gitignore to have their build-folder add itself to the ignore-list.

Nonono. This makes sense.
It ignores all other gitignore files in all subdirectories.
It would be one way to enforce concentrating all ignores into this file (or its ancestors).
save