@r.david.murray

> It is indeed the compatibility that is the worse issue.  The problem is what
> people have gotten used to and may have coded their applications to expect/deal
> with.  I agree with you that most people would *not* find it surprising to see
> the name reflected in the OS, but I don't think the convenience of that is worth
> introducing a potential backward incompatibility.

For now, Python thread names are always empty (as in many other programs). So Python-oriented tools that could expect some other outcome to bother check the names are just impossible (there is no alternative semantics they could perform in non-empty case).