But I'm not looking for an API that complete. A limited one, with the time lag and a few simple commands, would be still be quite useful.
In that case, you should edit your initial post to make that very explicit to the sort of person who only skims most threads (and change the subject line to match). You have to make this argument convincing to Toady, now, not necessarily us, and he has a lot of things to read.
You're using terms like "API", which is colored by the preconceived notion of the arguments that have taken place before this one.
No, it's not really fair, but it's true that people pass judgment fairly quickly on these things, especially when they see key terms that they have already loaded with emotions like "API" is because of previous arguments.
You should clear off that first paragraph of the original post, it doesn't have much to do with the argument. Toady knows what's already been on the ESV. The second paragraph doesn't need to be there - you're arguing to us in that paragraph, not Toady.
If you want to argue for this on the basis of it not being capable of breaking anything else, you should do a quick talk about the specific problem this specific solution will solve, and then go about talking about how it would be both easy to implement and would not require updating and would make Toady's maintenance of the game easier overall.