we need to talk about how many more 2.7
releases there are
going to be. At the release of 2.7.0, I
thought we promised 5 years of
bugfix maintenance, but my memory may be
fuddled.
I don't we need to make any "promises" beyond 5 years,
but I also think it is likely the 2.7 will end-up being a
long-term maintenance version of Python.
At this year's Pycon keynote, I surveyed the crowd (approx
2500 people)
and all almost everyone indicated that they had tried out
Python 3.x
and almost no one was using it in production or writing code
for it.
That indicates that Python 2.7 will continue to be important
for a good
while.
In addition, the other implementations of Python (Jython,
PyPy, GAE,
and IronPython) are all at or nearly at Python 2.7. So,
continued
support will be needed for their users as well.
After 2.7.4, I expect that the pace of real bug fixes will
slow down,
but that we'll continue to improve docs, add docstrings,
update IDLE, etc.
IMO, it is premature to utter the phrase "the end of 2.7".
Better to say, "2.7 is stable and is expected to only have
minor updates".
Future point releases probably ought to occur "on their own
schedule"
whenever there are a sufficient number of changes to warrant
a release,
or an important security fix, or whenever the release
managers have time.