On Feb 26, 2010, at 02:29 PM, Guido van Rossum wrote:
Byte-code only wasn't always supported. We added it knowing full well it had all those problems (plus, it locks in the Python version), simply because a certain class of developers won't stop asking for it. Their users are apparently too dumb to decode bytecode but smart enough to read source code, even if they don't understand it, and this knowledge could hurt them. Presumably users smart enough to decode bytecode will know enough not to hurt themselves.
For now, I've added a open issues section to the PEP describing the options for bytecode-only support. I think there are better ways to satisfy the bytecode-only packager requirements than supporting it by default, always, in the standard importer, but let's enumerate the pros and cons and then make a decision. -Barry