Zend certified PHP/Magento developer

Magento 1.9 / OpenMage Sales Order `customer_note` Field

A client is asking to have a customer order note section in their checkout.

I looked at this solution but it seems a little convoluted for what the client needs.

Then I came across this solution on GitHub. I can see there appears to be a totally unused field in the sales_flat_order table called customer_note right in the original sales_setup setup files. So it’s been there since Magento 1.6. But it seems completely unused.

My question is, very simply (and grep tells me the answer is no), is customer_note in the sales_flat_order table used anywhere? Or is this OK to use for this own basic extension?