Robert's patch looks fine to me.  My concern is changing this in a point
release (e.g. 2.6.5).  I know Guido said he was fine for this going into
2.6 but that was in January 08, before 2.6 final was released in October
08.  At this point, the question is whether this is safe to change in a
patch release or whether this needs to go in 2.7.

Probably a question for python-dev.