what will it take to get rid of all this legacy and create something new for today's needs? is it even remotely possible to do so?
(Remember the XML craze a few years back? Probably not, and that's a good thing.)
If it's designed by a small team for this specific use case, not to take over the universe.
But then the question becomes, who assembles this small crack team, and for what?
Why would they get paid? Who would pay them?
This is like basic research, more or less. Nobody wants to pay for it, but everyone would want now the benefits of the resulting awesome offshoots 20 years into the future.