It never rains, but it pours! Thanks for talking with Guido and hammering out these issues and options. You are of course right that the release schedule issue is enough to keep us out of Python core for the time being (and matplotlib out of scipy, according to JDH at SciPy04, for the same reason). However, I think we should still strongly work to put it there eventually. For now, this means keeping it "acceptable", and communicating with Guido often to get his feedback and let him know what we are doing. There are three reasons I see for this. First, having it core-acceptable makes it clear to potential users that this is standard, stable, well-thought-out stuff. Second, it will mean that numerical behavior and plain python behavior will be as close as possible, so it will be easiest to switch between the two. Third, if we don't strive for acceptability, we will likely run into a problem in the future when something we depend on is deprecated or changed. No doubt this will happen anyway, but it will be worse if we aren't tight with Guido. Conversely, if we *are* tight with Guido, he is likely to be aware of our concerns and take them into account when making decisions about Python core. --jh--