# PEP 703: Making the Global Interpreter Lock Optional

**URL:** <https://discuss.python.org/t/pep-703-making-the-global-interpreter-lock-optional/22606>\
**Category:** PEPs\
**Created:** [January 10, 2023, 4:08pm UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/pep-703-making-the-global-interpreter-lock-optional/22606 "2023-01-10T16:08:09Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 31

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**Author:** ![shelper](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discuss.python.org/shelper/32/10631_2.png) [@shelper](https://discuss.python.org/u/shelper)\
**Post date:** [January 14, 2023, 3:51am UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/pep-703-making-the-global-interpreter-lock-optional/22606/31 "2023-01-14T03:51:03Z")

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This is such a big change and breaks the backward compatiblity, to me it is very similar to what python community has done when moving to python 3.

looking back, 2 to 3 was such a slow (and maybe painful) move due to the incompatibility. but i believe the community has learned so much and i believe this time we should be able to handle this transition much smoothlier.  
I would think it is better to kick off python 4 for this pep. we can have python3 and python4 in parallel just like we did for python 2 and 3.

Developers have learned so much from last transition, and i think we will be in a much better shape if we do this again. it is a much cleaner way for doing such things, although it may appear there is more work to be done.

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