From now on, the line
from __future__ import unicode_literals
should be contained in every single Python file lest we run into any more 2.x/3.x issues.
Going forward, we're likely to develop on 3.x only and would likely miss subtle bugs otherwise.
utils is large enough without these compatibility functions.
Everything that is present in newer versions of Python (i.e. with dev Python it's just an import) goes into compat.py .
Everything else (i.e. youtube-dl-specific helpers) goes into utils.py .