The decorator @staticmethod turns a function into a static method which does not depend of self. These kind of functions could also live in the module name space. The staticmethod decorator is used, if functions are somehow related to a class and should be stored there.
#!/usr/bin/env python class cl1(object): i = 12345 @staticmethod def staticfunc(): print( "staticfunc", cl1.i) pass cl1.staticfunc()