@cardrunner nice post! I have the some opinion on botting... some are bad, some are useful to the game and its economy.
Also thanks for mentioning my bot as "the original" since it is true that has been copied/used by many others and sometimes without even share the credit.
I just wanted to add that the local db solution was intended to be just a backup to the more comprehensive solution I built originally which is a proper database with API. unfortunately as everyone like free stuff, the public server is often overloaded and therefore I kept the local database solution which works as you described.
But I also kept it opensource not only for transaprency but in the way that any one can use and tweak it as they wish... hopefully sharing the improvements with the community :)