Python does not play well with others

[Paul Rubin]

"George Sakkis" <george.sakkis at gmail.com> writes:
> > What does "batteries included" mean to you?  To me, it means you don't
> > have to install add-ons.
> 
> So let's make a 500MB executable and add Numpy, Zope, Django, PIL,
> pretty much everything actually. Even better, make CheeseShop just a
> frontend to a build system that adds and updates automatically
> submitted packages to the core. Problem solved ! <wink>.

Numpy should certainly be included and I think there are efforts in
that direction.  There is also a movement to choose a web framework to
include and Django might be a good choice.  I think the Zope
maintainers want to keep Zope separate and I think PIL has an
incompatible license.  I'm not sure what you mean about making
CheeseShop a front end to a build system, but I certainly don't think
random user contributions should get added to the core automatically.
Including a module in the core should carry with it the understanding
that the module has undergone some reasonable evaluation by the core
maintainers and is maintained.

I do think the core should have more stuff than it does, so that its
functionality can be on a par with competing language distros like
J2SE and PHP.  Both of those distros include database connectvity
modules and web frameworks.  It could be that those other packages can
include more stuff because they have more active developer communities
and can therefore expend more resources maintaining their libraries.
But if that's the case, since the Java and PHP languages themselves
suck compared with Python, we have to ask ourselves why Python has not
been able to attract similar levels of effort and what it could be
doing differently.