ElementTree - Why not part of the core?

[Jeremy Hylton]

> I still hope that the standard distribution will, in a not too distant future,
> bundle more external libraries.  as things are today, "including something
> in the core" means that you have to transfer code and rights to the PSF.

Your description of how to include something in the core isn't entirely
accurate.  If you visit  http://www.python.org/psf/contrib.html, you'll
see that you don't need to transfer your rights to the PSF.  Rather,
you need to sign an agreement giving the PSF the rights to relicense
the code.  The PSF currently require that the original submission be
licensed under one of two open source licenses.  Personally, I can
imagine accepting a wider range of initial licenses in the future.

As for transferring the code, there needs to be a copy in the Python
source control system, sure.  There's some unavoidable complexity
involved in managing a software distribution composed of third party
software packages.  At the very least, you've got the original sources
and the copy in the distribution package, which leads to a
synchronization problem.

Jeremy