[Python-ideas] size of the installation of Python on mobile devices

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Xavier de Gaye writes:

 > It would be useful to know the other reasons why a sourceless
 > distribution is discouraged,

I wouldn't say it's discouraged, except for the ethical reason that
Python is open source, and we love the idea that our users can hack
Python for their own needs.  That, of course, is balanced by the fact
that sourceless distribution is exactly such a derivative.

But I don't see why maintaining a sourceless distribution is an
appropriate use of core developer time.  On the one hand, it seems to
be something that can be done separately from the core, and there are
already many examples.

On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be demand for a "generic"
sourceless distribution -- removing source is the *easy* part.  In
fact there are many use cases that *need* variants, so it seems to me
that it would be likely to be a real hairball of optional features.
For example, as Terry mentioned not all applications need the
unicodedata module, and it's *big*, but many applications I can
imagine doing myself (spam-checking and other validation of textual
data) would include it.

Steve