I think Brett already answered this well in the post you’re replying to: PEP 722: Dependency specification for single-file scripts - #210 by brettcannon
I don’t see how Brett’s work on VSCode is anything but a positive here. It’s not like that pushes him towards any particular solution, beyond having a solution.
Note that VSCode could just as well unilaterally just do something nonstandard (just like pipx and pip-run already did). Instead, they’re participating with the community, spending their time to ensure multiple proposals are considered, and arranging funding for user studies.
As Brett already mentioned, the “one week” wasn’t a diktat, but a first step in a conversation between Brett and Ofek. See the post you’re replying to.
Like Brett already said, if Paul thought someone else would be able to spend more time or do a better job than Brett, he could ask them to do so. Note that if you’re questioning Brett’s ability to make a fair judgement, you’re also questioning Paul. You’re well within your rights to do so, but if so you’re better off trying to make a stronger case to the Steering Council as to the process failings of PEP delegation. I’m also confused as to what your object level objections are… It seems you prefer PEP 723 (as do I), and we live in a world where PEP 723 exists and will be considered — if there’s not an object level failing here, I’m not sure there’s much of a case.
I do think the “the fact that I’m willing to even consider” sounds poorly phrased, especially out of context (and I would be unhappy if Brett hadn’t seriously engaged with alternatives, in discussion or in PEP). But there is still truth in that statement. Time is finite, but in my experience Discuss threads on Python packaging are infinite. At some point, if you want to make change, you have to bound your effort. 2 PEPs after 300+ posts is already a lot of effort!
Finally, I’d echo everything David said in My thoughts on the Packaging PEP process - #5 by davidism , especially the part about reading negatively into folks’ intentions and motivations. Brett has been a steward of the community for far longer than I’ve known to code — if I was Brett, this kind of post would make me just not want to improve things.