Adding Requests to the standard library

> I think this is a reaction to inadequacies to application distribution in the Linux OS model where each version of each distro provides a unique ABI, which leads to 10+ common variations that an app developer is expected to support. It doesn't matter if the different Linux OS distros are 99.999% compatible with one another, if you use some reasonable number of shared libraries it is almost certain that some two common distros will have mutually incompatible ABIs. It only takes one library difference to screw it up for your application.

you are blaming the distros for this, but it's really the developers that are driving this.

if you are developing a library, you should think about all your users, and not assume that everyone is always going to be upgrading to the latest version the minute you release it. you need to maintain backwards compatibility so that programs compiled against a prior version will keep working with a new version.

If you are developing an application, you need to evaluate the libraries that you choose to use, not just from the point of view of what features do they offer, but from the point of view of what their attitude towards stability is. If the library developers routinely break backwards compatibility, then they had better offer a _really_ great feature set to make up for this big drawback. And if you pick a library with a bad track record, you need to do so with the acceptance that this will cause you problems, and those problems are worth it.