What's so funny? WAS Re: rotor replacement

[Paul Rubin]

"Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> writes:
> > Let's see, the urandom module was recently released in 2.4, I think
> > initially at my urging.
> 
> There is no urandom module in Python 2.4.

Oops, sorry, it's in the os module:

   http://docs.python.org/lib/os-miscfunc.html

The difference is simply a matter of the packaging.  It's important
functionality and it was added after an amount of review and testing
that was deemed to be reasonable.  Unless you're saying that if I
wanted to add AES to the string module (so you could say 
'spam and sausage'.aes_encrypt('swordfish banana')) instead of writing a
separate module, then we wouldn't need this discussion.  (Putting it
in the string module is not a serious proposal but it wouldn't be
completely insane.)  What matters is the code complexity, not whether
something is in a separate module or not.

> > If Guido says "no crypto", is that something other than a
> > policy?  And are you speaking for him when you say that?  <wink>
> 
> If he had said such a thing in general, it would be a policy
> (although it best would be documented somewhere). I don't think
> he said that, in general, and with the intent of stating a policy.

Well, if he indicates that it's not a policy and that the question is
still open, then I could see getting interested again in writing an
AES module.  At the moment I continue to see his python-dev post as
quite discouraging.

> We don't normally invite people to work on anything. People pick the
> things they work on themselves.

Not true.  For example, you once invited me to work on an ancillary
message feature for the socket module (SF bug 814689), and so it's
been on my want-to-do-one-of-these-days list since then.  I think it's
reasonable for me to have taken your message there as an expression of
interest, sufficient to get me to want to work on it.  So it's bogus
to say the Python developers should avoid expressing interest in
something that hasn't already been written.

> > IETF often decides and announces that a feature is good long before
> > any such details are decided or agreed on.
> 
> No. They decided that spam machinery in DNS would be a good thing,
> people started to work on it, and then they decided that it is not
> such a good thing, after all, because it causes too many problems.

There's no contradiction.  IETF decided something based on some
reasonable beliefs that later turned out to be wrong, so they had to
undo the original decision because the original expectations couldn't
be met.  That happens sometimes.  Everyone has worked on projects that
ended up failing and getting cancelled for reasons like that.  There
are few ironclad guarantees of anything, only reasonable beliefs.  But
real-world organizations are not afraid to start projects based on
reasonable beliefs regardless.  Otherwise, few things would ever get
done.

> It does matter for me, yet Python is still more than the core.
> 
> You might be ignoring that, but it surely is more to the many
> developers which create Python libraries and distribute them
> themselves, see
> 
> http://www.python.org/pypi
> THIS IS ALL PYTHON.

No.  Those are programs people have written in Python or as Python
extensions.  I've written programs like that myself.  I don't consider
them to be part of Python.  They are separate programs.  If one of
them gets accepted into the distro (as this thread is about), then it
becomes part of Python.  See <http://www.python.org/doc/faq/general.html>:

    1.1.6   How do I obtain a copy of the Python source?

    The latest Python source distribution is always available from
    python.org, at http://www.python.org/download/. The latest development
    sources can be obtained via anonymous CVS from SourceForge, at
    http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/python.

Python is what you get from following the download instructions and
installing the result.  In <http://www.python.org/doc/faq/installed.html>,
where it asks "why is Python installed on my machine?", that is what
they are referring to by "Python".

> > Obviously those require a different type of consideration.  I'm
> > talking about patches where there's a core developer with an interest.
> 
> I though you were talking about the AES module...

No, when this started you were talking about modules in general.