And of course now that the mysql_ functions are no longer defined in the core, the door is wide open for people to write their own mysql_ functions to wrap the mysqli_ ones just so they don’t have handle rewriting their code to use mysqli_.
I’m not saying I endorse it (I don’t), and I’m not saying it’s pretty (it isn’t), but you bet it will happen, simply because it’s (probably) the fastest solution to work around the removal of the mysql_ functions.