On Tue, Sep 10, 2019 at 10:03 PM Ned Batchelder <ned@nedbatchelder.com> wrote:
I'm not looking forward to answering questions from the public about why the PSF is writing dire and specific warnings like "We have decided that January 1, 2020, will be the day that we sunset Python 2," while the core devs are planning a release four months after that. It won't help Python's credibility, and may convince some people that they don't have to take the date seriously..
To me it seems pretty clear: On Jan 1st 2020, the 2.7.x branch will no longer receive fixes for any *new* bugs or security issues, nor other improvements. I would expect that be the time of the code freeze for the first release candidate, not the time of the final release. While we will still fix issues *introduced in 2.7.18 since 2.7.17* before the final 2.7.18 release, we won't address any other bugs or security issues and won't backport anything *new* from 3.x. (I may have some details not exactly correct here, but I hope the gist is correct.) I'm sure the wording could be improved, but generally this seems entirely reasonable to me. - Tal Einat