Hal Finney's role in early bitcoin development?

The following is a great thread for bitcoin history buffs like myself. However, I am a bit confused about Hal Finney's role with early bitcoin development. Hal Finney was added as a developer by Satoshi himself to the original bitcoin sourceforge project in early December 2008 suggesting an early collaboration beyond what I have read in the public domain email exchanges unless I missed something. Anyone else have more insight into why Satoshi added him first and so early? Here is the summary of Hal's involvement mentioned in the earlier thread:

Quote from: xdrpx on February 02, 2018, 04:31:44 PM

From the github contributors list I noticed that on selecting a range between 2009-2010 I can see few developers https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/graphs/contributors?from=2009-08-30&to=2010-12-31&type=c and https://github.com/non-github-bitcoin (an account created for commits before the bitcoin-core code was probably migrated to github from sourceforge)

1) Satoshi Nakamoto
2) sirius-m (Martti Malmi)
3) laszloh - based on some commits made here https://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/code/252/log/?path= (go to older and you'll find them all here) https://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/code/123/
4) Gavin Andresen

Quote from: Kprawn on February 02, 2018, 04:45:49 PM

I think it is reported somewhere that Nick Szabo also communicated with Satoshi. Hal Finney was also the recipient of the first

Bitcoin transaction, so he had to have contact with Satoshi in some way, other than the Crypto forum they talked on. ..

Quote from: LeGaulois on February 03, 2018, 02:07:02 AM

Hal Finney discovered the Bitcoin project via a cryptography mailing list, then later he interacted with Satoshi via emails