"Who said anything about not supporting users who want the hierarchy?
I'm talking about making "qualname" ****optional****, not removing it
entirely!"

Ok, I see - sorry for the misunderstanding on my part.

"... these files need to be read and edited by non-coders and they're a
lot scarier (and harder to tweak) than the old ones were. Basically
they're full of abstract technical concepts ("qualname", "handler") and
bits of python code to be eval'ed."

The configuration format is not (and was never) intended for
non-technical end users. Because of the way it works, typos in the
elements which are eval'd can throw exceptions, which is obviously
undesirable. If you want such users to be able to change the logging
configuration, I would advise you implement your own layer which does
not use any technical terminology such as "handler" or "qualname", and
from that layer either update the logging configuration via the logging
API, or write a standard logging config file.

"It's not particularly hard to find people out there raising this if you
google a bit."

Well, I did do a search for "+python +logging +config +problems" which
didn't throw up much (other than this issue). I'd be grateful for some
specific links to recent items which you have found.