[wheelerof4te]

Python's ease of calling C libraries is both the blessing and a curse.

My opinion is that it's mostly a curse, since you are hampering the language's evolution and growth for a mere temporary benefit.

Not to mention the horror of distributing compiled libraries, which is one of the biggest reasons why packaging in Python is still such a nightmare.

Making CPython faster by getting rid of the GIL will do wonders for this language and it's community. It will make it much more portable, too. Think of Java-level portability, but in a much nicer package.