[Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Sun Apr 7 05:38:40 CEST 2013


On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 7:02 AM, Benjamin Peterson <benjamin at python.org> wrote:
> 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?

This aligns well with what I've been telling people for the past
couple of years, so +1 from me.

Commercial Linux distros will also offer 2.7 support out beyond 2015,
and it seems to me that the intersection between "needs Python 2.7
support beyond 2015" and "is willing to pay for that support" is
likely to be pretty high. If the demand is there on the Windows side,
then I expect companies like ActiveState and Enthought will also be
happy to oblige.

Cheers,
Nick.

--
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia


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