On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 3:08 PM, Guido van Rossum <guido@python.org> wrote:
Anyway, the "Python core" includes a lot of stuff that isn't covered by the moratorium (which only prohibits changes to syntax and associated semantics, not implementation issues).
Changes to semantics are rare enough that I'm not sure a moratorium (but allowing bug fixes) would matter. (Particularly if you stick to the claim that details of import resolution are implementation-specific.) I have no opinion on changes to syntax; they're already uncommon, but saying they'll wait until 2013 doesn't bother me. The limit on builtins may be more of a problem. For example, I liked Brett's work on signatures. If he gets motivated to work on it again, I don't want him to say "Drat; I really need access to this one extra function attribute, which isn't currently exposed at the python level. I guess I'll have to wait a few years." It would be reasonable to say that changes to builtins will be rare, and will typically be strictly additions to functionality, as though they were replaced by a subclass which overrode nothing except that certain Exceptions were now handled internally. (In other words, *if* the name previously existed, it either keeps the same meaning, or gets wrapped in something that just calls the old meaning as a try suite, with all new functionality inside the except suite.) -jJ