The reason was that `pyflakes` doesn't like it.

The reason was probably to be able to import only this file. As it's now parsed, I don't see the problem about it, as there is no `docs/conf.py` either. I'd move all the rest to another file though as I usually don't expect to find useful code in `__init__.py`. IMHO, it's a pure matter of taste.

Everyone is doing it:
* [django](https://github.com/django/django/blob/master/django/__init__.py)
* [sqlalchemy](https://github.com/clones/sqlalchemy/blob/master/lib/sqlalchemy/__init__.py)
* [gevent](https://github.com/surfly/gevent/blob/master/gevent/__init__.py)