Why does ActivePython exist?
What's ActivePython actually about?
From what I've read it's just standard Python with OpenSSL and PyWin32 (on Windows). No big deal I guess; I could install them in matter of minutes, and most people don't need them anyway. All other mentioned libraries (zlib, bzip2, SQLite 3, Tkinter, ElementTree, ctypes, and multiprocessing) are part of the core Python distribution.
Next up, the tag-line "ActivePython is the industry-standard Python distribution", isn't core Python distribution "industry-standard" (whatever that means?)?
And the weirdest thing, is that ActiveState bundles it with crappy PythonWin, and not their own most-awesome Python editor/IDE, Komodo. What gives?
I actually never got to installing ActivePython, so maybe I don't know something, but it seems pretty irrelevant, and I see the name quite often on forums or here.
Answer
It's a packaging, or "distribution", of Python, with some extras -- not (anywhere) quite as "Sumo" as Enthought's huge distribution of "Python plus everything", but still in a similar vein (and it first appeared much earlier).
I don't think you're missing anything in particular, except perhaps the fact that David Ascher (Python enthusiast and my coauthor in the Python Cookbook) used to be CTO at ActiveState (and so no doubt internally pushed Python to go with other dynamic languages ActiveState focuses on), but he's gone now (he's CEO at the Mozilla-owned firm that deals with email and similar forms of communication -- Thunderbird and the like, in terms of programs).
No doubt some firms prefer to purchase a distribution with commercially available support contracts, like ActivePython, just because that's the way some purchasing departments in several enterprises (and/or their IT departments) are used to work. Unless you care about such issues, I don't think you're missing anything by giving ActiveState's Python distribution a pass;-).
(I feel similarly about costly Enterprise distributions of Linux, vs. Debian or Ubuntu or the like -- but then I'm not in purchasing, nor in an IT department, nor do I work for a very traditional enterprise anyway;-) )