Purpose of "Renew their membership automatically" is unclear

Steve and I have been discussing this option that a team maintainer can set: "When someone's membership is about to expire, Launchpad should notify them and: (*) renew their membership automatically, also notifying the admins". At face value, this seems like a complicated way of doing nothing: Launchpad lets you set a time period after which memberships not-expire, and e-mails you to let you know that it's not-expired them.

The option might exist to remind team admins of who is a member of their teams, without actually expiring them. But if so, this could be implemented in a way that didn't mention the word "expire" at all.

Another possible purpose is to let someone sign up to teams knowing that Launchpad will remind them of the membership at regular intervals, to prompt them to unsubscribe if they are no longer interested. (Like how Mailman reminds people of what mailing lists they're subscribed to.) But this would work only if it was an option members could set for all teams they're a member of, rather than an option admins could set for individual teams.

I suggest that the "renew their membership automatically" option be removed, or if necessary replaced by a separate option that addresses the relevant use case without referring to memberships expiring.