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Thanks Skip.  I see that the ripple effect here is enormous 
(not surprising, given that socket is used by many standard 
modules).  As for #3 - I understand you can use 
marshal.dumps() and then sock.sendall() to achieve the write 
side of a socket-based marshalling transaction, but for a long-
lived connection, marshal.load() on the .makefile()'d file of the 
read-side provided a very nice message-boundary mechanism, 
i.e. - marshal was the "protocol" on the wire...

Obviously (I've already done this in my application) I can just 
use a thin length header on the wire, but it was just very nice 
that marshal accomplished this by itself.  I can also (since my 
platform scope is known, controlled, and limited) create a 
socket.py local to my application which is simply (I don't use 
getfqdn()):

from _socket import *

And leave everything else as-is.  Again, I appreciate the 
attention and effort - I think the ramifications of eliminating 
the "native C" implementation which previously 
backed .makefile() (where supported) are more than just the 
impact on marshal - I see potential performance loss for 
things which rely on it.  In any event, generic object support 
for marshal.load() and .dump() would be great!

Thanks again, Dave.