It's not "a little extra work", etc/passwd is far simpler because it isn't distributed. How would you propagate user aliases between repositories? Besides, to

It's not "a little extra work", etc/passwd is far simpler because it isn't distributed. How would you propagate user aliases between repositories? Besides, to what repositories? And how would you make an user authoritative regarding his alias? Or would you allow every repository to have its own aliases? And... Easily more complex than the main version control functionality. Sorry, the only reasonable technical answer to such a feature request for Git is HELL NO.