Revert breaking change

[jbagga]

Addresses #6518

cc @Eilon @rynowak @pranavkm

[rynowak]

/cc @henkmollema - sadly we had to go with the extension method approach, this was too much of a breaking change 😭

[henkmollema]

Aww, that's too bad. But no worries, I understand.

If I may ask, why is such a change not allowed for a major version? Is it just too big?

[jbagga]

@rynowak @pranavkm Added null checks

[rynowak]

If I may ask, why is such a change not allowed for a major version? Is it just too big?

It's technically allowed, but we found that this broke some existing libraries in a trivial way. Small breaking changes are the worst kind because the value add is small, but all of those libraries are still broken until they ship a new version.

[henkmollema]

I see, thanks for the explanation.