Erik,

Your approach is a Decorator pattern (according to Gamma and Helms "also known as wrapper" :-)). A direct quote from Gamma and Helms is "Decorators provide a flexible alternative to subclassing for extending functionality." If something is an alternative is certainly is not the thing it is an alternative to.

So I guess, on the semantics, I stand on John's side. I do like your approach though and think it is a really valuable contribution to the general knowledge base.