In response to Raymond:

First, Serhiy is a core developer now, so if he wants to commit this code and maintain it I have no objections as it doesn't detract from anything and the maintenance burden is his if he wants it. Whether any of us view it as the best use of his time or not is not our call and we can't stop him. =)

Second, while PyPy may have an RPython implementation, it's originally from 2006, has already been patched by them twice in 2011 for bugs, and may not be needed by them anymore based on current performance characteristics of PyPy today in lieu of this code (and that's assuming they wrote the code in RPython originally for a specific reason compared to just needing something that worked, but this is all a guess w/o actually benchmarking).

Third, I can't predict future VMs and their needs. It might not be used by a VM today (unless PyPy starts using it for their py3k work), but who knows what the future holds? As I said, Serhiy already wrote the code and is the core dev who will maintain it if it goes in so I don't see a maintenance burden here that is being hoisted upon python-dev.

Fourth, I added a comment to issue #16651 to state that people should see what the other VMs already have and to start a conversation first before moving forward with a Python port to make sure no one views it as a waste of time.