Opening with "there are at least five python lock formats pre-existing" then proposes a 6th. I'd like to know if poetry, uv, etc are willing to adopt this before going forward otherwise we're just splitting the community further.

That said, I do think having reproducible builds as an explicit goal is important here, as several pre-existing formats like requirements.txt are too lax on that front.

Could they just pick the most popular one and make it the canonical standard through a PEP? Because they seem to be doing two things at once here: making a standard and making a new format. You don’t have to do both.

A new format can fix issues that exist in the existing ones, but does that benefit outweigh the benefit of adopting the most popular existing option and having a free and massive heard start towards getting everyone to adopt it and retire the other four?