I'm not sure I fully buy this argument. I think programming languages are chosen for projects based on a number of different factors, speed being one of them, but developer productivity being another (and there are certainly many more). Given that there isn't usually going to be one language that is the best choice for every single factor, it seems pretty natural that some teams might pick Python due to productivity being more important but still have some need for better performance, and other teams might not be able to compromise on performance and have to resort to something like Java or Go or C++ but still would be able to iterate faster with something higher level. It's definitely not a given that there are enough potential projects that would get enough benefit from removing the GIL to make it worth it, but it seems silly to claim that anyone would would get any possible benefit from performance would never choose Python for other reasons.