I'll get roasted for saying this, but now that modern terminals like kitty can handle a huge number of colors, why not set the bar at requiring that many colors - which any decently modern PC can handle? Like throw out 16-color mode completely, along with 486 CPUs, PCMCIA cards, and floppy disks.

Then have sane, pleasant color schemes that aren't all harsh and glaring - which 16-color mode often looks like.

Whatever dev is great at logic, but is bad at picking colors, should humble themselves when someone with taste in colors comes along and offers a PR to make the default color schemes better (keeping in mind the higher-contrast needs of the visually impaired, favoring "dark mode").

Take a look at the color schemes which can be chosen from within "theme.sh -i" for great examples of such color schemes. Many are in poor taste, but there are also some great ones - which usability experts would agree are functionally the best, from a legibility perspective.