I've never seen it that way. My group tried and quickly discarded the idea, with prejudice, and no one I taught to play is even familiar with the concept. But even the people I know who had previous experiences with published adventures generally cannot remember the name of the adventure or the point of it; it certainly hasn't had any unifying effect in my gaming community and seems to almost invariably result in poor experiences for the players. At best, they look at it as the equivalent of a DM playing t-ball or learning to ride a bike using training wheels. I don't look at it nearly so favorably.
Setting "at best" aside though, the concept of playing a published adventure is contrary, in my opinion, to the very nature of the game. If a DM solicits people to play in his game and then runs a game that someone else created, it violates the social contract. It's like someone inviting you over to watch a movie, sticking a DVD in, and then going out with some other friends and leaving you alone. In the literal sense, you are watching a movie (or playing D&D), but the person's lack of caring and investment is hurtful and socially unacceptable.