This is not part of my patch

Michael W. Hudson · Michael W. Hudson · commit 96bc3b4d7410 · 2002-11-26T14:48:23.000Z
[ 635933 ] make some type attrs writable

but should have been!

News about the above.
diff --git a/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew23.tex b/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew23.tex
@@ -896,6 +896,13 @@ \section{Other Language Changes}
 <type '_socket.socket'>
 \end{verbatim}
 
+\item One of the noted incompatibilities between old- and new-style
+  classes has been removed: you can now assign to the
+  \member{__name__} and \member{__bases__} attributes of new-style
+  classes.  There are some restrictions on what can be assigned to
+  \member{__bases__} along the lines of those relating to assigning to
+  an instance's \member{__class__} attribute.
+
 \end{itemize}
 
 
diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -12,6 +12,8 @@ What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
 Type/class unification and new-style classes
 --------------------------------------------
 
+- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
+
 - dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
   is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}.  Accordingly,
   the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
