Message 206968 - Python tracker

Indeed. However in Modules/_io/_iomodule.c:

PyDoc_STRVAR(open_doc,
"open(file, mode='r', buffering=-1, encoding=None,\n"
"     errors=None, newline=None, closefd=True, opener=None) -> file object\n"
"\n"
"Open file and return a stream.  Raise IOError upon failure.\n"
...

Perhaps Larry has relations to this.