This does not solve the GIL problem - it reduces it just a little.

ZEO and ZODB are nice, but using them also does not solve the problem - there is still one serialization for every update and one de-serialization for every independent client/dirty-read. I love Zope and Plone and use them for a lot of situations (I won't think twice when someone wants a CMS for their intranet), but I sure would like to be able to set "zserver-threads" to 64, buy a Sun Niagara-based server and just live happy with it watching how all thread units get their fair share of usage.