Steven D'Aprano writes:
I'm not being tongue-in-cheek or sarcastic. My question was serious -- if there is a moratorium, is there any reason to bother submitting patches for functional changes to built-ins?
Yes. Python is open source. Private and public forks are possible and (at least in principle) encouraged where the core project decides that the proposed changes are inappropriate (or should be deferred, as here). Nevertheless, isn't the core Python project the obvious common point of contact for sharing such ideas, even if there is a moratorium on the code base itself? I know that a few patches to Mailman have lived for nearly a decade, beloved by their users and not (much) bothering the Mailman maintainers with their obvious pitfalls for naive users. Whether the tracker is the appropriate place is another question, but I think it's easier to search for "serious proposal with patch" than the mailing lists.