There were already patches to "just" remove the GIL for Python 2.0 or thereabouts, over 20 years ago. Strictly technically speaking it's not even that hard, but

There were already patches to "just" remove the GIL for Python 2.0 or thereabouts, over 20 years ago. Strictly technically speaking it's not even that hard, but as you mentioned it comes with all sorts of trade-offs. Today Python is one of the world's most popular programming language, if not the most popular language. The GIL is limiting and a trade-off in itself of course – designing any programming language is an exercise in trade-offs. But clearly Python has gotten quite far with the set of trade-offs it has chosen: you need to be careful to "just" radically change the set of trade-offs that have proven themselves to be quite successful.