I think the primary problem with removing the GIL is the performance from degraded garbage collection. To quote the issue with an implication that it isn’t a big deal because it’s not many words, doesn’t make the case for me. The delay in when garbage collection happens is the only reason to my mind why Java sucks balls as a memory hog vs C-based languages. Process performance is in large part based on when critical lowest latency memory resources can be freed for the top level working object set.