>> Re "threading locks cannot be used to protect things outside of a
>> single process":

> The Python standard library already violates this, in that the
> "logging" module uses such a lock to protect the file/socket/whatever,
> to which it is writing.

logging is not doing anything to protect things *outside* of a single process - the logging docs make that clear, and give specific recommendations for how to use logging in a multi-process scenario. Logging is just using locks to manage contention between multiple threads in a single process. In that sense, it is no different to any other Python code that uses locks.