[Python-Dev] Official version support statement

[Terry Reedy]

"Tony Nelson" <tonynelson at georgeanelson.com> wrote in message 
news:p04330101c26ac5b79f21@[192.168.123.162]...

At 12:58 AM +0200 5/12/07, Martin v. Löwis wrote:
|>However, I would prefer to not use the verb "support" at all.

agreed

|"The Python Software Foundation maintains the current stable major
|release of Python.  By "maintains" we mean that the PSF will produce
|bug fix releases of that version, currently Python 2.5.

This strikes me as an improvement, but 'maintain' is close to 'support' and 
seems to make a promise that might also have unintended legal consequences. 
But that is what your legal consel is for.

The actuality is that the legal fiction called the PSF *releases* new 
versions produced by a collection of volunteers, some of whom are PSF 
members and who perhaps consider that they do their work 'in the name of' 
PSF, and some of whom are not PSF members and perhaps do not have such a 
consideration.

Defining CPython as a PSF rather than volunteer community product might 
discourage volunteer contributions.  'Official' statements need both 
motivation (what is there that is actually broken?) and care (to not break 
something else).

| We have released patches for earlier versions as necessary, such as to 
fix
security problems,

Funny thing here is that the security releases, by necessity, are more a 
PSF product than normal releases.

Terry Jan Reedy