I suppose that is a good and bad thing. I love Forge and everything it does and it has allowed me to enjoy Minecraft for years. I would hope that an API would allow developers to release mods easier. As a programmer (not MC) I can totally understand how much frustration must go into keeping a mod up-to-date. There are so many MC updates and the mod devs have a hard time keeping up. It also lends to older versions not being supported and kind of segregates the community.
Having seen a number of mods not update past 1.7.10 has been a scary site to me (Team CoFH) and a few others and I can't say I blame them as trying to develop in such a changing environment has to become tedious especially since they are doing it on their own time with little if any funding.
I applaud the devs that have kept up and can one day hope the API comes. I do hope that Forge and Lex and the others aren't left out in the cold as Forge is what has made me love MC.