A) Giving end users the option of arbitrarily adding others to the database might make sense in applications that you are building for specific business clients, but I am having trouble fitting it into how I want to run my sites/applications so I am very happy to see you remove this code from core because there is a danger others will use it as an example. It is also a relief to hear it was test code, b/c it helps me rationalize why you were falling back on naming people using punctuation if no accurate data is available.
B) Happy to contribute to the discussion but I doubt I will be using contacts for any sites I run. It seems it has become a very "customer relationship management" specific package based on the demos you have given me and the discussion I have had with people about it.