> Perhaps the following might be a prudent course:

This sounds all good. It is better if the experts in a domain
make a recommendation, than if some random committer makes
a choice.

> As for shutting down any project that is chosen, does such an action not 
> leave older Python versions out in the cold? Shouldn't the project 
> remain open to support Python versions < 2.7, with a highly visible note 
> that the code is included in 2.7/3.1+? 

Of course - hence I said "eventually". The project could continue to
maintain the external version as long as they please, provided it
doesn't diverge from the in-core version (unless it is the in-core
version itself that diverges). What I don't want to see happen is that
the community recommends at some point to ignore the outdated crappy
version in the core, and replace it with the more-powerful bug-fixed
version available separately. This has happened in the past, so I'm
extremely cautious here.