What's so funny? WAS Re: rotor replacement

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Paul Rubin wrote:
> 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.

> If you can't speak for others, how can you say there's no policy in
> force?

I should say I'm not aware of a policy.

> 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.

> That's much different than merely deciding
> that a feature is good and inviting people to work on it.

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

> IETF often decides and announces that a feature is good long before
> any such details are decided or agreed on.  For example, they decided
> that IP connection encryption was a good feature, and appointed a
> working group a general mandate to go figure out the details (IPSEC)
> and write a spec.  See?

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.

So the decision "this is a good thing" is no guarantee for
"if it is done, we will publish it as a standard". They might
start a process, people might get nearly through it, and then
the process stucks or is given up entirely. Happens all the time.

> I realize that the difference might
> not matter to you, but it does matter to a heck of a lot of other
> users.

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.

> 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...

Regards,
Martin