[Python-Dev] Deprecation policy

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Matt Joiner writes:

 > This is a great argument. But people want to see new, bigger better
 > things in the standard library, and the #1 reason cited against this
 > is "we already have too much". I think that's where the issue lies:
 > Either lots of cool nice stuff is added and supported (we all want our
 > favourite things in the standard lib for this reason), and or the old
 > stuff lingers...

Deprecated features are pretty much irrelevant to the height of the
bar for new features.  The problem is that there are a limited number
of folks doing long term maintenance of the standard library, and an
essentially unlimited supply of one-off patches to add cool new
features (not backed by a long term warranty of maintenance by the
contributor).

So deprecated features do add some burden of maintenance for the core
developers, as Michael points out -- but removing *all* of them on
short notice would not really make it possible to *add* features *in a
maintainable way* any faster.

 > I'm sure a while ago there was mention of a "staging" area for
 > inclusion in the standard library. This attracts interest,
 > stabilization, and quality from potential modules for inclusion.

But there's no particular reason to believe it will attract more
contributors willing to do long-term maintenance, and *somebody* has
to maintain the staging area.