Arrow and pendulum (my current favorite) have a very decent API. The later one is especially well tested for the numerous corner cases of date handling, which I doubt Kenneth got right on first try.
For request, a full rewrite made sense because urllib sucked so much and we had no good alternatives. But for date time, alternative exists and they are good. Do not split the open source effort, join forces!
... nice to see it mentioned.
This library is not going to divert much (any?) effort that could have improved other date-time libraries.
Trying to funnel someone with an itch into a project is a bit like making someone on meth fill out paperwork: kills the buzz and works out poorly. And if just one human understands the nightmare of date handling a bit better, it is a positive thing for the humans.
Other stuff that are splitted:
- attention;
- visibility;
- pull requests;
- documentation edits;
- bug reports;
- installs (and hence testing on the field);
- compatibility layers;
- compatible tooling;
- 3rd party tutorials, snippets and examples;
- help from integrators;
Now if you don't have any very good alternatives, it's good : you want to steal that from them. But when you DO have good existing projects, then those are the bread and butter of their success.
Now I know it's way harder to contribute to something than roll you own. I know that's it's also more fun to roll your own. And there is the ego at play as well.
I understand all that, and I respect Kenneth as a professional. But I don't think it's a good call on his part here.
It is espacially true for him, because he now have such a good rep in the Python community that everything he does get under the spotlight.
Even taking all of what you mentioned into account, it's still not more than a single afternoon.
I agree with you in general, splintering in open source is a real problem worth tackling, but this is just not a case where it makes any sense to worry about that.
[1]: https://github.com/kennethreitz/maya/blob/master/maya.py
Maya could have been built to require Arrow, but it makes sense to avoid the dependency.