[Python-Dev] An example of Python 3 promotion attitude

[Nick Coghlan]

On 6 October 2015 at 21:29, Maciej Fijalkowski <fijall at gmail.com> wrote:
> Now I sometimes feel that there is not enough sentiment in python-dev
> to distance from such ideas. It *is* python-dev job to promote
> python3, but it's also python-dev job sometimes to point out that
> whatever helps in promoting the python ecosystem (e.g. in case of pypy
> is speed) is a good enough reason to do those things.
>
> I wonder what are other people ideas about that.

It's not generally python-dev's job to promote Python 3 either - folks
are here for their own reasons, and that's largely a shared aim of
making a better programming language and other tools for our own
future use (whatever those use cases may be). The fact that there are
lots of *other* people that find those tools useful and helpful (to
the point of elevating Python to being one of the most popular
programming languages in the world) is a beneficial side effect of
doing that work in the open, rather than necessarily being the reason
people decide to participate.

This is the key difference between community open source projects and
commercial products that also happen to be open source - in the latter
case, good luck getting anything added that doesn't align with the
sponsoring company's plans, while in the community driven case, we
don't *have* a pre-defined road map, we have a lot of individual
contributors with possible ideas for improvement (occasionally company
sponsored, usually not), and a range of processes for reviewing,
refining and deciding on whether or not to accept those ideas.

That said, those of us that get paid to be here (even part time),
typically *do* have a significant obligation not to leave current
Python 2 users behind, hence the extended lifecycle for the 2.7
series, and the ongoing work in lowering barriers to migration from
Python 2 to Python 3. Those of us working for commercial
redistributors (depending on our specific role) are also likely to
have at least some obligation to our customers to help them understand
the implications of the migration, and assure them that we'll help
them manage the shift in a minimally disruptive way.

Cheers,
Nick.

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