I think this should be deferred to Py3.1. 

This decision was not widely discussed and I think it likely that some
users will be surprised and dismayed.  The release candidate seems to be
the wrong time to yank this out (in part because of the surprise factor)
and in part because I think the change silently affects shelve/anydbm
performance so that the impact may be significantly degraded but not
immediately apparent (test suites will still succeed).

We don't have to take this out.  So why do it hastily at the last minute
and without some discussion on comp.lang.python at least.

If it were any other release, we would have disciplined ourselves to
deprecate first and remove a generation or two later.

Also, the stated reason for removal may yet disappear if jcrea steps in
as promised and continues to make updates.

Also, the referenced note (
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2008-July/081379.html ) say
to "start end-of-lifing it" which I took to mean deprecate rather than
completely remove during a release candidate.