Here's a changed patch. The first line is the first line of the changelog entry without "simple.el"; it doesn't fit.
I'm in favor of changing M-u, M-l, and M-c to the new commands; I think it's much improved behavior. The only time a user would have to do more work to perform a capitalization action is if they've selected a region, but want to act only on the next word. I would bet that's rare, and even so, the user only has to press C-g before the capitalization. So if we're ok changing default commands, I think changing M-u, M-l, and M-c is a win.