Accessing StandardJMeterEngine.allThreads

Hi all!

JMeter users frequently ask for some inter-thread communications on JMeter 
forums. I have an idea of custom function that would give information from any 
thread for another thread. I think this will give wanted interaction.

The problem implementing it is that only place where all JMeterThreads stored 
is StandardJMeterEngine.allThreads and I found no way to access that list.

Field declaration from StandardJMeterEngine:
	/** JMeterThread => its JVM thread */
	private final Map<JMeterThread, Thread> allThreads;

 So my questions are:
1. Is it possible to get access to that map in some read-only way (not to 
break anything...)?
2. If yes, how better do it: simple getter, or something more required? I'm 
ready to create and submit a patch to Bugzilla.
3. If the way is simple enough, could it be the part of JMeter 2.5 release, 
because waiting another year for the next release is obviously undesirable? 

Sorry, if I'm asking for too much, but with my efforts, too, JMeter becoming 
more and more popular load testing tool. 

Thank you!
--
Andrey Pohilko
JP@GC Maintainer