[David Ascher]
... Regardless, just like Greg, I'd like to know what a pumpkin-holder would mean in the Python world.
I propose that it be called the Oracle instead. As in, whoever is Oracle would get some training with Tim Peters and learn how to channel G__do.
I'm afraid that wouldn't work. The whole secret to channeling Guido in the *past* was to have been an ABC user: all you had to do is notice the things about ABC that you loved and the ones that would drive any sane *experienced* programmer mad with frustration. Voila! Guido's mind is your mind <wink>. But the more Python sails into uncharted waters, the less reliable my Guido-channeling pseudo-skills get. He is, in Essence, Unfathomable. Also indispensable.
As a Python user, I'd be most comfortable with such a change if the Oracle just took over the technical stuff (reviewing patches, CVS checkins, running tests, corralling help for doc & code, maintaining release notes, building installers, etc.), but that the important decisions (e.g. whether to add a feature to the core language) would be checked with G__do first.
Definitely. But where do you find someone like that? It's (or at least *should* be) several full-time jobs. Languages like Icon & Scheme do it via university association (scads of grad student slave labor); REBOL did it by floating a trendy Internet business plan that actually attracted enough venture capital to hire about 30 people; Python, unfortunately <wink>, seems to attract people who already have demanding jobs. So I see it as an issue of finding warm bodies more than anything else. In the absence of funding "real jobs", I really don't see much hope. Bits & pieces can be farmed out (e.g., I doubt Guido has had to do any work on the regular expression code since Andrew arrived), but that's it -- I expect the past predicts the future quite accurately here. Certainly much more *could* be "farmed out", but no single volunteer of the kind Python has attracted so far is going to do a lot on their own month after month after month. Even with the best of intentions, their "real life" will interfere severely more often than not (voice of experience, there -- and I'd guess it's the same for *all* of us). if-something-doesn't-change-nothing-will-change<wink>-ly y'rs - tim