[Python-Dev] Benevolent dictator versus the bureaucratic committee?

[Greg Ward]

On 01 November 1999, Mark Hammond said:
> I have for some time been wondering about the usefulness of this
> mailing list.  It seems to have produced staggeringly few results
> since inception.

Perhaps this is an indication of stability rather than stagnation.  Of
course we can't have *total* stability or Python 1.6 will never appear,
but...

> * Portable "spawn" module for core?
> No result.

...I started this little thread to see if there was any interest, and to
find out the easy way if VMS/Unix/DOS-style "spawn sub-process with list
of strings as command-line arguments" makes any sense at all on the Mac
without actually having to go learn about the Mac.

The result: if 'spawn()' is added to the core, it should probably be
'os.spawn()', but it's not really clear if this is necessary or useful
to many people; and, no, it doesn't make sense on the Mac.  That
answered my questions, so I don't really see the thread as a failure.  I
might still turn the distutils.spawn module into an appendage of the os
module, but there doesn't seem to be a compelling reason to do so.

Not every thread has to result in working code.  In other words,
negative results are results too.

        Greg