I'm not sure why socketserver isn't left to rot, or used as an example of how not to do things. Most Python APIs are idempotent with regard to methods that would otherwise set an object's state to whatever it already is. I would expose the running property but not make successive starts throw an exception. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/attachments/20120328/35412d19/attachment.html>