Antoine: As the patch matured I would obviously provide documentation
and examples and such.  The point of submitting the patch in this form
was a) so it was alive somewhere besides my hard drive, and b) to get
some public review from the core team to ensure I was going in a valid
direction.

As for mandatory vs purity: The whole purpose of the patch was to make
PyTypeObject a private type; see "THE PROBLEM" / "THE SOLUTION".  This
requires that all the public interfaces take pointers.  So within the
context of what the patch is trying to accomplish, it's mandatory.

The patch attempts to mitigate this as much as possible with the
backwards-compatibility 

p.s. By "huge" I suspect you mean "large", though on first reading I
thought you meant "fabulous".  That's what I get for working with a big
crew of 20-somethings.

p.p.s. Did this patch get mentioned recently or something?  After months
of inactivity, there have been two nosy+ this week.

p.p.p.s. I have not touched this patch since submitting it.  The
tribulations of working at a startup.