Steven: I understand that Alex said he thought that putting "strict" in as a flag would make it a bit more likely that people would use, and that he thinks that's a good thing, and you think that's a bad thing, but...
Unless we were to make it the default behavior, very few people are going to be adding this flag "just in case".
And the fact that you think that making it a flag will make it more likely that folks will use it is an argument for making it a flag. Unless you don't like the idea at all, and want it to be more obscure and hard to find.
In any case, you seem to making the argument that a few of us are putting forward: yes, a flag on zip() is likely to get more use than a function in itertools. Thanks for the support :-)
However, you also seem to be making the argument that this feature would do more harm than good. I disagree, but if that's what you think, then it shouldn't be added at all, so please make that case, rather than arguing for adding it, but making it harder to find.
-CHB