It seems to me that all this version range talk relates pretty directly to PEP 386.
The Python version numbers themselves are the simplest type of "Normalized Version"s, and since comparisons of "NormalizedVersion"s are defined in PEP 386, and that's really all we're talking about here, shouldn't this really just follow and reference that document?
That's for the ordering operators (<, <=, >, >=). Tarek absolutely wants a shortcut way of specifying a range, and such a mechanism is not discusses in PEP 386 (other than the conventional >=min,<max, which is not shortcut enough).
Sure we might like some sugar to make expressing ranges simpler, but shouldn't the explicit meanings of any rules be stated in terms of Normalized Version comparisons?
That turns out to be tricky. I agree that the PEP doesn't currently specify it properly (at least, it now says something that Tarek said he didn't want). However, try coming up with wording that says "~=A means >=A and < 'words to describe the proper upper bound'". Regards, Martin