I disagree. We can change, rename or remove it because it is not public function and never was. But we can not just remove it while it is used in the pickle module, and there is no reason to change it as it works pretty good for its purpose.

If you want to make it public and maintain it, I suggest first discuss this on the Python-Ideas mailing list. You should prove that the benefit of adding it is larger than the cost of the maintance.