Legacy course files in moodle 2.x

My new 3rd party course vendor requested that I activate Legacy Course Files in my moodle 2.2 instance.  On my first try, I missed a step and he had to ask me a second time saying he did not see the choice in the course to turn it on.  There are the steps necessary to enable legacy course files in a moodle 2.x course.

Log in as Admin

1. Site Admin | Plugins | Repositories | Manage Repositories (enable legacy course files)
2. Site Admin | Plugins | Repositories | Common Repository settings (select the checkbox)
3. Select the course to display the legacy course files folder
4. Edit Settings | Legacy course files = yes.

All this being said, I am not real clear about why we need to activate this setting.  I understand that it provides a way for the user to see the files used in the course, but the recommendation in moodle docs is that we not allow the user to see the legacy files area and rather encourage them to use the other newer repositories for storing new course files.  The docs say to discourage users from saving files to this area.

More information here