[Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Benjamin Peterson]

Per my last message, 2.7.4 has at long last been released. I apologize
for the long interval between 2.7.3 and 2.7.4. To create more
determinism in the future, I will be soon updating PEP 373 with
approximate dates of future 2.7 bugfix releases. I will be aiming for
6 month intervals.

This means we need to talk about how many more 2.7 releases there are
going to be. At the release of 2.7.0, I thought we promised 5 years of
bugfix maintenance, but my memory may be fuddled. At any rate, 2.7.0
was released in July 2010, which currently puts us within a few months
of 3 years of maintenance. Over the past year, I've been happy to see
a lot of movement towards 3 including the porting of important
codebases like Twisted and Django. However, there's also no doubt that
2.x is still widely used. Obviously, there will be people who would be
happy if we kept maintaining 2.7 until 2025, but I think at this
juncture 5 total years of maintenance is reasonable. This means there
will be approximately 4 more 2.7 releases.

Thoughts?

Regards,
Benjamin