^It's time to leave the prison of strict canon behind.
I whole agree 100%. TrekLit does a fine job of dealing with the canon. Let's not have the new film (s) or any new project have to wade through the canon waters.
As broad as it is, Trek canon is often deceptively vague with a lot of room for interpretation. It's one of the reasons I didn't think Enterprise violated canon nearly as much as a few people seemed to think it did. You could set a new series smack dab in the middle of TOS era and probably never mention a single hard fact or piece of continuity from the original. You can add without subtracting.
You don't have to acknowledge or explore the existing canon, but I think there is enough elbow room that there are hundreds of good stories left that there is no need to deliberately violate it. I am not a nitpicker though, little things don't bug me. I'm not going to get my panties in a bunch because Scotty comes from a different county than I thought he did or the Enterprise has 16 warp coils instead of 14, but Vulcans should be logical , Starfleet command should be in San Francisco, there shuold be warp drive and phasers, the UFP... you know what I mean?
Trek should still by and large be Trek, otherwise they should make another show with new rules and species and ideas. I think what JJ is doing looks great.