"It doesn't happen in Python 3"

Yet the cheap/unnecessary pre-imports of ssl in those other mentioned socket using libs (urllib (cgi!),httplib,smtplib,pop,imap...) exist there. socket is rarely used directly, so not much difference to Py2 in effect overall.
And Python2.7 lives - which is important for the majority of users perhaps.

Thus I'd request to not close this issue so swift. This is IHMO really a point to make python startup significantly faster, with a rather simple means.

Also the linkage of _ssl solely against a detailed version of libssl/libcrypto is still questionable.


"This is therefore a problem with the Debian package"

I'm not into the Python build files. Just to ask/double-check: is that observed _semi_ static link selection (which is good otherwise - somebody must have done surprisingly lots of care) really from Debian or is there maybe a sort of 2nd default option bundle somewhere in Pythons configure? (If really not so I would go for Debian BTS.)