The documentation for threading.Thread states: 

"""Once the thread's activity is started, the thread is
considered 'alive' and 'active' (these concepts are
almost, but not quite exactly, the same; their
definition is intentionally somewhat vague). It stops
being alive and active when its run() method terminates
- either normally, or by raising an unhandled exception."""

This is confusing. There doesn't seem to be a need to
expose both 'alive' and 'active' concepts in the API. 

The confusion was reported as part of Issue 912943
"7.5.6 Thread Objects is too vague"

This patch:
- adds an isActive() method to Thread, that tests
whether the thread is active. 
- adds documentation for isActive()
- modifies the documentation for isAlive(), noting that
it is deprecated and explaining why.

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I'm confused. Wouldn't it be better to just keep the
isAlive() method instead of deprecating it and introducing
isActive() in its place? In that way you only have to change
the documentation and the API can remain intact.

Superseded by patch #1680968.