Functionally, they help with filtering, like in the example in my edit above. You can also see what (for example) PickNik is maintaining. Fun fact: There’s still Willow Garage emails on 37 packages.
They are also available on the individual status pages, but “that’s how we’ve always done it” is a poor excuse and this puts all the emails in one convenient spot.
Open to suggestions. The community is probably small enough to just use names, but it may be a problem for people who are not consistent with which name they use in their package.xmls, i.e.
- Isaac I.Y. Saito (aka Isao Isaac Saito, Isaac Isao Saito, Isaac I. Y. Saito)
- Víctor López (aka user, Victor Lopez, Victor López, victor)
- TORK (aka Tokyo Opensource Robotics Kyokai (TORK) Developer Team, Tokyo Opensource Robotics Kyokai (TORK) Development Team, Isaac I.Y. Saito, Keio University Yamaguchi Lab, Tokyo Opensource Robotics Kyokai(TORK) Developer Team)