> Maybe I understood and ctypes ImportError simply must be handled and
> fallbacked to something else.

Indeed.

> But there are only 3 ways of getting MAC address:
> 1. using popen
> 2. using ctypes and native calls
> 3. using C API and performing native calls in extension
> 
> And ctypes seems to be the best choice: it's portable across Python
> VMs (better that 3) and faster (better than 1).

Perhaps, but doing without ctypes should still be possible, otherwise
it's a regression.