On behalf of the Python development team, I'm thrilled to announce the first and only beta release of Python 3.1. Python 3.1 focuses on the stabilization and optimization of features and changes Python 3.0 introduced. For example, the new I/O system has been rewritten in C for speed. File system APIs that use unicode strings now handle paths with undecodable bytes in them. [1] Other features include an ordered dictionary implementation and support for ttk Tile in Tkinter. For a more extensive list of changes in 3.1, see http://doc.python.org/dev/py3k/whatsnew/3.1.html or Misc/NEWS in the Python distribution. Please note that this is a beta release, and as such is 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. This beta is 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 downloadable distributions, 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-0375/ Enjoy, -- Benjamin Benjamin Peterson benjamin at python.org Release Manager (on behalf of the entire python-dev team and 3.1's contributors)