[Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

Steven D'Aprano steve at pearwood.info
Sun Apr 7 10:01:44 CEST 2013


On 07/04/13 17:44, martin at v.loewis.de wrote:
>> Martin, you guys are shooting yourself in a foot. Almost noone uses
>> python 3 in production, even at pycon, which is the more progressive
>> crowd. There is a giant group of people using python that are not as
>> vocal. While I bet some are using Python 3, Python 2 is incredibly
>> popular for the "long tail" of libraries and applications. How much is
>> 2.7 a burden? There are no major changes and it's pretty cool to
>> consider it "done".
>
> Indeed - hence I think it is just fine to stop applying bug fixes to it,
> as well. People for whom it works fine today apparently don't run into any
> significant bugs. They can happily continue to use it as-is for ten or more
> years. It will not go away just when we reduce changes to security fixes.
> It will remain available for download, the documentation will keep being
> online, people can continue to ask questions about it on python-list, and
> continue to get answers.


+1

On the python-list@ mailing list, we occasionally get posts from people
still using Python 2.3, and regularly from people on 2.5.


> Stopping to apply bug fixes does not really *end* Python 2.7.
>
> It's only that people who *do* run into bugs don't have the option anymore
> that we will eventually publish a fixed release. Their options reduce to
> - port to 3.x (particularly interesting if Python 3.x *already* fixed it)
> - find a work-around
> - maintain a bug fix locally
> - do something else entirely (like abandoning Python)

Or, if they have paid support from a vendor like Red Hat, hassle the vendor
for a fix. Speaking of 2.3, as I understand it Red Hat still offer paid
support for 2.3, which won't expire for a few more years, and security fixes
only for some years beyond that.

[By memory, which may not be entirely accurate.]



-- 
Steven


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