OS X crashes "No memory", but much of it free I was running a Python code which may have increased the need for memory. Anyhow, the following happened, and I feel it should not.


I have 16 GB memory and it shows only 3 GB allocated to Python
Remainder of memory apparently not allocated to anything
Should a single application be able to suck that much memory s.t. the rest of OSX becomes vulnerable / non stable?
Have a look in the Console log. You will likely see that it's a Python-internal issue. Most likely a recursion or some exhaustive memory allocation. Python and other languages use a limited stack/heap to store runtime data (like the call stack). If that is exhausted they simply croak and do not ask the OSX to provide more memory.