[Python-Dev] collections.sortedtree

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Tres Seaver writes:

 > I'm mostly arguing the FLOSS project

You mean "a (mostly) volunteer-supported" FLOSS project, no?

 > should feel free to ignore

Given the above qualification, you can put a period here, as far as
I'm concerned.  My question is "what does *Python* *want* to ignore?",
not "is it allowed to ignore?"

 > high-maintenance-cost

What "high" maintenance cost?  A stdlib addition is a marginal
increase in cost.  Do too many, and it's a serious burden, of course.
So there needs to be *some* hurdle that any addition must clear, and
that barrier becomes higher in proportion to the "code base to
developers who actually do maintenance" ratio.  But I think the
question should be "how high?" not "can they pay?"

 > commercial concerns until those concerns bring either blook (funded
 > developer time) or treasure (pooled to pay for the same time) to
 > the table to pay for them.

I really don't think commercial profit as the motive for a request, or
ability to pay, should be an important reason to *ignore* user wants.
This smacks of the proposals for "ransom software", which (a) sort of
turns the principle of *volunteer* FLOSS on its head (if that doesn't
bother most of the developers, no problem, but for one it bothers
*me*), and (b) doesn't actually work AFAICT (it's not quite the same
as "crowdfunding", which does work).

It's rather the reverse: I believe we should be prepared to deal with
the conflict of interest that results when *some* of the developers
are offered money to provide *cater* to such concerns[1] where the community
doesn't think the benefit is that high.

Footnotes: 
[1]  Should not be that hard in *this* community, but that is the
issue IMO.