sej7278 wrote:so just assign it a hostname on your pc or router based on ip address (/etc/hosts) or mac (/etc/ethers), assigning a hostname on the esp itself solves nothing
I believe the idea was that this happened automatically; think about what happens when you try to distribute a ESP based product (be it OSS, or actually selling it), not having it send your hostname is a big usability hit. The popularity of OSS projects (and the size of the community) depends basically on the barrier of entry.
For example, figuring out your ESP's ipaddr and setting it in your router on every new network is about 10 steps (they're not hard, i grant you that) that can automated by patching the DHCP client to send the hostname when it asks for an IP.