On behalf of the Python development team and the Python community, I'm happy to announce the first alpha release of Python 3.1. Python 3.1 focuses on the stabilization and optimization of features and changes Python 3.0 introduced. The new I/O system has been rewritten in C for speed. Other features include a ordered dictionary implementation and support for ttk Tile in Tkinter. Please note that these are alpha releases, and as such are not suitable for production environments. We continue to strive for a high degree of quality, but there are still some known problems and the feature sets have not been finalized. These alphas are being released to solicit feedback and hopefully discover bugs, as well as allowing you to determine how changes in 3.1 might impact you. If you find things broken or incorrect, please submit a bug report at http://bugs.python.org For more information and downloads, see the Python 3.1 website: http://www.python.org/download/releases/3.1/ See PEP 375 for release schedule details: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0361/ Enjoy, -- Benjamin Benjamin Peterson benjamin at python.org Release Manager (on behalf of the entire python-dev team)