Firstly, the ease of integrating changes.  It would be possible to port those bugfixes that release-27 gets, and also backport selected things from py3k using the tools already in place such as svnmerge.

Second, it would be an official nod from the python community that, yes, we are not actively developing 2.x anymore, we want to focus on 3.x but we acknowledge that there are members of our community that cannot, for various reasons, move to 3.x, but still want to be able to improve their platform and share those improvements with others.

James Y Knight said:

The python community has already decided many times over that Python2 is dead and Python3 is the future

But the patient is very much alive and kicking, no matter what the good doctor declares.  Python 2.x is in widespread use, with gazillion lines of .py code.  In, there is another gazillion lines of .c and .cpp code both in extensions and embedding applications in use.  I’m quite happy with the community at large moving its development focus to 3.x but it is a bit harsh to deprive those left behind of the keys to the old house.

Cheers,

K

From: Daniel Stutzbach [mailto:daniel@stutzbachenterprises.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2010 11:45
To: Kristján Valur Jónsson
Cc: Python-Dev (python-dev@python.org)
Subject: Re: [Python-Dev] Continuing 2.x

already plays host to some other, less official, projects such as stackless, so why not this?