[Python-Dev] folding cElementTree behind ElementTree in 3.3

["Martin v. Löwis"]

> How does this differ from any other module in stdlib that may not have
> a single designated owner, but which at the same time *is* being
> maintained by the core developers as a group? ISTM that requiring a
> five-year commitment is just going to scare any contributors away - is
> that what we want?

I'm not talking about contributors, I'm talking about a maintainer.
When we have a maintainer, that can actually attract contributors.

Recognizing that something is a long-term commitment is scary, yes.
However, a number of contributors has accepted such commitments, e.g.
the release managers. Asking that for a subpackage is not asked too
much, IMO.

Compare this to distutils: if we've had a commitment of the original
author to maintain that for a long period, the setuptools, distribute,
distutils2, and packaging forks may not have been necessary. In absence
of a maintainer, nobody is able to make difficult decisions.

> What happens now? Do we give up on touching it until Fredrik Lundh
> decides on a come-back or some person who is willing to commit 5 years
> is found? Or do we just *keep* maintaining it in the stdlib as we do
> with other modules, fixing bugs, tests, documentation and so on?

If we really can't find somebody dedicated to that code base enough,
we should consider removing it from the standard library.

Regards,
Martin