The transition to Python 3 is happening but there is still a massive amount of code that needs to be ported. One of the most disruptive changes in Python 3 is the strict separation of bytes from unicode strings. Most of the other incompatible changes can be handled by 2to3. Here is a far out idea to make transition smoother. Release version 2.8 of Python with nearly all Python 3.x incompatible changes except for the bytes/unicode changes. This could include: - print as function - default string literal as unicode - return view objects for dict.keys(), etc - rename modules in standard library - rename long to int - rename .next() to __next__() - accept only new 'raise' syntax - remove backticks for repr - rename unicode to str - removal of 'apply', 'buffer', 'callable', 'execfile' - exec as function - rename os.getcwdu() to os.getcwd() - remove dict.has_key - move intern to sys.intern() - rename xrange to range - remove xreadlines New features of Python 3.x could be backported if easy since they could be useful to entice developers to move from 2.7 to 2.8. Problems with this idea: - it would be a huge amount of work. There are thousands of commits to Python 3.x since it was branched. Most of them are not related to the above features but back porting them would still be a huge effort. I tried backport 'print' as a function just to get an idea of the work. - if people install this new version of Python as the default, old scripts and programs will break. I believe this breakage was the movation for making Python 3 an all-at-once jump. I'm not sure how to handle this, maybe this version could be used only by developers during their Python 3 porting efforts. Alternatively, only install it as 'python2.8', never 'python' or 'python2'. An alternative approach to producing Python 2.8 would be to start with the Python 3.x latest branch. Modify bytesobject and unicodeobject to have as close to Python 2 behavior as practical. A-journey-of-a-thousand-miles-begins-ly y'rs Neil