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Is 1.0.3 from the Red Hat RPMs, the python.org RPMs (which
version), or directly downloaded from the distutils?  If
this is an issue in Distutils, I'd be interested in still
fixing it.  However, there hasn't been any activity on this
in 3 years, so I'm planning on closing this unless I hear
something further over, say, the next few weeks.

Red Hat 9.1 is extremely legacy now, of course.  Not at all
supported for errata by either Red Hat or the other Legacy
sites, so I'm inclined to feel the same.