On Oct 20, 2021, at 08:18, Eric Snow <report@bugs.python.org> wrote:

> The spec identifies how a module should be loaded (or how it was loaded and should be reloaded).  We should be careful to preserve that identify and not invite uses to modify the spec after (or while) the module is loaded.  PEP 451 talks about the difference a little, but I'm pretty sure it came up in more detail in discussions about the PEP at that time.

It’s frankly not good enough to capture the *intent* of these attributes in a PEP.  We need to be clear in the documentation about their purpose and we need to be clear about when to use or set either the module attribute or the spec attribute.  The current situation is ambiguous and possibly misleading.  But maybe it’s “just” a documentation issue?