[eluser]Phil Sturgeon[/eluser]
I think the majority of folks in here are in agreement.
Alexis, I understand your worries, but there are a million things we could do to improve CodeIgniter and break the API but this seems like a tiny one. It's the only thing I want to fix for CI 3.0 which could cause any problems. While it is minor it will clean up so much of my code and fix a lot of bugs.
I'll be happy to come to your office and spend a day or two upgrading your applications to CodeIgniter 3.0 (it would be nice to hang out again) but I will of course be charging my day rate!