Just looking at it from a financial perspective, having a great Python interpreter that doesn't have a GIL seems like a no brainer for $50,000, and it creates another reason why people should take a look at PyPy.
Side note: if you haven't looked at PyPy, check it out, along with RPython
But still I don't know anybody who uses it? It seems like the C extension API is still an issue, or am I mistaken?
Switched from CPython to PyPy, instant 3x performance boost.
This feels like a number that might in the end blow up to 10x the original estimate.
It might as well not be the case here, I just found it funny, 50k is our little magic number.
(And really, was it intended to be dangerous in this way?)
No, these libraries are already semantically broken in the same way e.g. libraries which didn't properly close their files and assumed the CPython refcounting GC would wipe there asses were broken.
They're already broken under two non-GIL'd implementations.
Expecting bad code to magically work forever is unrealistic and hinders progress.
What python doesn't have is a C api for extensions that makes sense without a GIL. So ideally a correct threadsafe C extension will continue to be correct, which probably implies that a function called "PyEval_AcquireLock" will continue to provide similar guarantees. Which means that the process for utilizing more cores with pure python code in one process will probably be a gradual upgrade process.
Neither do I think that raising $50K for Python interpreter would be an issue.
PS: I don't find Django an excellent ORM per se. On the other hand it's highly pragmatic, and their implementation of automatically-generated migrations have saved a good chunk of my time.