It's not scoped to only this module:
https://github.com/Gozala/addon-sdk/blob/5f40402ed399996c0606095fc1a543c832a013dc/lib/sdk/panel.js#L117

But even if it was it's still useful to reason with verbs since where and how we get model / view / .. for the given panel instance is completely irrelevant in places we call this function, it only makes further changesets bigger and makes focusing on actual function code using it harder.