All changes are looking fine to me but I haven't looked at the patch so far.

"__metaclass__ = type" is easier to write than subclassing from object.
Both are equivalent. 

>>> __metaclass__ = type
>>> class Foo: pass
...
>>> Foo
<class '__main__.Foo'>
>>> Foo.__bases__
(<type 'object'>,)
>>> type(Foo)
<type 'type'>