Thread:Talk:Requests for comment/Localisation format/Broken shim

I just downloaded an updated (bugfixed) extension that included a .i18n.php "shim" which said that it "maintains compatibility back to MediaWiki 1.17". However, versions prior to 1.20 only required php version 5.2.3, whereas it seems that the shim requires 5.3, which means that this shim does not necessarily provide compatibility back to MediaWiki 1.17. Surely this should be relatively easy to fix?