(Note: Additional context can be found here: http://bugs.python.org/issue16942, which seems to be a dupe of this report)

I haven't had any feedback to my proposal on python-ideas about the removal of LWPCookieJar and MozillaCookieJar and the introduction of LWPCookieProcessor and MozillaCookieProcessor yet (http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.ideas/19673), which could be indicative of this change simply not being acceptable. However, on the outside chance that's not the case, I've submitted a patch covering the proposed implementations. All tests pass. 

The patch addresses some of the oddities around FileCookieJar looking, but not behaving as an abstract class as well as inheriting from a concrete class (CookieJar). The change aligns LWPCookies and MozillaCookies with the HTTPCookies. This should fix the questions around why FileCookieJar can't be used directly. If this change looks reasonable, corresponding documentation changes will be made as well.

Note: This change /does/ break backwards compatibility. I'm not sure what the process is for that, so if this change is eventually applied, pointers as to what should be integrated where would be helpful.