You're not Jeff Atwood, you haven't built up a persona of being a proud idiot that can't code his way out of a paper bag without getting a blessed library from on high. You can do it yourself. You are a big boy with real tools. Do it.
It is just not difficult to poke a webserver over HTTP, especially when you have a documented and widely used interface provided to you on a silver platter.
If MS didn't agree then why did they make the API in the first place? A main part of my issue is that MS got the project started (never mind how half assed), people depended on the library and then it was just abandoned.
It's not like it wasn't being used either. It's a popular toolkit. Like you said, it's not difficult to poke a server so why do they abandon a project people depend on?