I think the performance comment is in regard to the single-threaded common case. The reason the GIL is still around is that Guido has said that a replacement i

I think the performance comment is in regard to the single-threaded common case. The reason the GIL is still around is that Guido has said that a replacement is only acceptable if it avoids performance regressions for single-threaded code. Most of the Python world seems to have concluded that that's not possible in practice.