I agree with Ned, this sounds like a significant change. In particular, Portable Python seems to currently only offer 3.2.5 at the moment. And it's not at all clear to me whether it's a 32-bit or a 64-bit version (but I suspect the former). One thing I'd want to understand would be why 3.4.3 and 64-bit versions weren't available. Is it just manpower (and if so, what manpower commitments would be needed from python-dev) or are there more fundamental issues with the Portable Python stack holding up the move to the latest version?

I'm also concerned that we should ensure that any distribution we bless is compatible with pip and packages installed on PyPI. I would be very concerned, for example, if we were moving towards a situation where wheels for Windows were *not* usable by the average user. (That specifically means that all commonly used distributions used the same CRT as the python.org builds, that distributions we recommend play well with pip, etc).

None of this is intended as a criticism of any of the distributions. I just think that actually *recommending* them in place of the python.org installers implies a certain level of assurance from python-dev - and we don't have any process in place to actually validate the distributions.