The first one is about licensing.
What I would be doing is basically copy& paste pieces of the python
stdlib modules (including tests) and, where needed, adjust them so
that they work with older python versions.
Would this represent problem?
You have a "nonexclusive, royalty-free, world-wide license to ..."
"prepare derivative works, distribute, and otherwise use Python alone or in
any derivative version," so: no, this is no problem ...
"provided, however, that PSF's License Agreement and PSF's notice of
copyright, i.e., "Copyright (c) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007,
2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 Python Software Foundation; All Rights Reserved" are
retained in Python alone or in any derivative version prepared by Licensee."
My second doubt is about morality.
Although this might be useful to those people who are forced to use
older python versions, on the other hand it might represent an
incentive for not upgrading (and there will be python 3.X features as
well).
Don't worry about that. I'm not sure how many people would be interested
in your approach in the first place - if I have to support old versions
of Python, I personally just don't use newer features, and don't even
have the desire to do so. If I want to use newer features, I decide to
drop support for older versions. That I get both with a hack as such
a module is just something that I *personally* would never consider
(there are other reasons for me to consider hacks like this, such as when
supporting multiple versions is just not feasible, but I wouldn't
use a hack for convenience reasons).
People that do feel the same way as you have probably started their
own emulation layers already, so by publishing your emulation layer,
it's not getting worse.
Regards,
Martin
