On Sat, Apr 06, 2002, Guido van Rossum wrote:
I'm not sure what exactly we need to *do* now. Be clearer to the user community that we're still maintaining 2.1.*? Delay the 2.3 release and spend more time on 2.2.2 (assuming that 2.2.1 is about to go out)? Change the Makefile and the RPMs to install each 2.X version under a different name, e.g. only install as python2.2?[*] Rearrange the website to emphasize the stable version?
First of all, I agree with the idea of better management of multiple Python versions. But before we can start being clearer to the community, we need to be clearer to ourselves. Historically, there has been an attitude of, um, antipathetic neutrality toward the idea of maintaining old versions of Python. Until today, I was under the impression that your official attitude (as usually channeled by Tim) was that creating patch releases was something that PythonLabs would assist volunteers to accomplish, but would not push for in any way. It sounds to me like your attitude has in fact changed. If so, then I think the first step is to say so explicitly. After that, I'd like a clear statement of the new goalset for Python development. Once we have that, I think it should be relatively straightforward to create a process to support the new goals. Perhaps the whole PythonLabs crew should have an in-person brainstorming session to kickstart the goalmaking process? What's Zope doing to handle this issue? -- Aahz (aahz@pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/ "There are times when effort is important and necessary, but this should not be taken as any kind of moral imperative." --jdecker