Thanks, Barry, for getting a release out on a Sunday, while I was still recovering from a week of Belgian food, beer and hacking. And thanks also to Tim, Fred, Jeremy, Neil, and all others who helped getting this release out. Looking over the list of highlights it's clear that 2.3 is focusing on stability. I hope that we can limit trunk checkins to bugfixes only between now and the final release of 2.3. I can now mention why I suddenly wanted to accelerate 2.3's schedule. At EuroPython I was cornered by the key Macpython developers with exciting news: Apple's next release of Mac OSX, code-named Panther, uses Python and Apple is planning to include Python 2.3 in that release. (Apple already ships Mac OSX with Python 2.2 included in the developer tools, but Panther will actually use Python for some essential functionality.) Apple's schedule is such that August 1st is about the latest release date for Python 2.3 that will make this possible. I appreciate everybody's help with keeping this schedule! --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)