When will the GIL be removed?

[pydsigner]

Why would the GIL be removed?  Do you like locks?

Personally I wouldn't mind having the option to run at least some code without the GIL (maybe with a thread.start_nongil_thread function). Besides, you need locks today when working with threads regardless; you'd just need more. Disabling the GIL globally, however, would lead to subtle but potentially catastrophic breakage in existing code, which is about the worst possible breakage you can get.