[Python-Dev] Bring new features to older python versions

[Michael Foord]

On 08/10/2011 20:38, Maciej Fijalkowski wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 8:35 PM, "Martin v. Löwis"<martin at v.loewis.de>  wrote:
>>> The first one is about licensing.
>>> What I would be doing is basically copy&    paste pieces of the python
>>> stdlib modules (including tests) and, where needed, adjust them so
>>> that they work with older python versions.
>>> Would this represent problem?
>> You have a "nonexclusive, royalty-free, world-wide license to ..."
>> "prepare derivative works, distribute, and otherwise use Python alone or in
>> any derivative version," so: no, this is no problem ...
>>
>> "provided, however, that PSF's License Agreement and PSF's notice of
>> copyright, i.e., "Copyright (c) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007,
>> 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 Python Software Foundation; All Rights Reserved" are
>> retained in Python alone or in any derivative version prepared by Licensee."
>>
>>> My second doubt is about morality.
>>> Although this might be useful to those people who are forced to use
>>> older python versions, on the other hand it might represent an
>>> incentive for not upgrading (and there will be python 3.X features as
>>> well).
>> Don't worry about that. I'm not sure how many people would be interested
>> in your approach in the first place - if I have to support old versions
>> of Python, I personally just don't use newer features, and don't even
>> have the desire to do so. If I want to use newer features, I decide to
>> drop support for older versions. That I get both with a hack as such
>> a module is just something that I *personally* would never consider
>> (there are other reasons for me to consider hacks like this, such as when
>> supporting multiple versions is just not feasible, but I wouldn't
>> use a hack for convenience reasons).
>>
>> People that do feel the same way as you have probably started their
>> own emulation layers already, so by publishing your emulation layer,
>> it's not getting worse.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Martin
> Most programs I know have it's own imperfect version of such thing, so
> I would definitely use it. Not everyone can drop support for older
> versions of python at will.
Ditto. unittest2 and the mock test suite both have a subset of this in 
for some of the newer Python standard library features they use (plus 
putting back into Python 3 some of the things that disappeared like 
callable and apply).

All the best,

Michael Foord


> Cheers,
> fijal
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