Fixed in the py3k branch in r86223, r86224 and r86226.  Thanks for the report and starting patch.

Eric: This compatibility policy was instated because a newer version of distutils may be used/is often used to install distributions for older Pythons.  In the 2.x line, this was enforced.  I checked the current py3k code with the oldest version I have, 2.4, and it’s not entirely compatible.  Python 3.x is developed as a clean break from 2.x (no versionchanged directives in docs, etc.), so what’s the status of the distutils compatibility policy?  I think that the reasons are still valid, so keeping 2.x source compat in py3k is a nice thing to do for our users.  Even if we’re working on distutils2 (which will have releases for 2.4-3.2), distutils is still widely used and we expect a long transition period.

I can bring this up on python-dev if you think it’s needed.