Because most of these utilities were created to build things, and contributing to the stdlib has never been on one of those critical paths?

But really, @marmaduke's got it right. The standard library has a MUCH higher barrier to entry than PyPI. Have you seen python-ideas [1]? I truly do not have time to have it out with some of the more vocal elements of that group.

But, down the list:

- OMD might be a good fit for the collections module, I've chatted about it a bit with Raymond Hettinger on and off. He wasn't totally against it, so that's something!

- Exponential backoff is too opinionated for itertools, and generally a lot more high-level and conceptually modern than the rest of Python's built-in networking facilities.

- remap: I really like it, even though I'm typically not a big fan of functional programming in Python. But the Python devs are even less appreciative than I, with GvR disliking lambdas, and Py3 dropping reduce() from the builtins. Plus after years of watching Python core dev, it doesn't seem like the people with the time to work on core Python have much time left over to work with IRL complex APIs and other sources of dynamic nested data?

- Atomic file saving probably should go in the stdlib, but probably not relying on ctypes (on Windows) and I'm not going to pull out my old Windows laptop again just to start writing C.

- Traceback utilities: Probably the one I wish I had time to push for most. traceback's string-only approach feels really dated in the structured-logging age. I'd expect a lot of FUD around messing with error handling.

Maybe now that boltons is pretty popular it's worth giving it a go just to see what lies beyond the typical listserv response: "put it on PyPI and if it's popular, we'll see" :)

[1]: https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/

In addition to the other reply, there's often a reluctance -- on the part of both the Python core team and the developers of popular third-party code -- to add things to the standard library, since doing so ties you to Python's development process and release cycle. This is one reason why pip is not in the standard library, for example (instead, Python ships a module which will go get pip for you); it needs the ability to develop and release at its own pace and on its own terms.

The standard library has a higher barrier to entry than PyPI.