[Python-ideas] Proposal to change Python version release cycle

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Just to clarify: Python 2.0 was called 2.0 because the BeOpen marketing
department thought it was good idea, not because there were major
incompatible changes going into that release.

Porting code from Python 1.5.2 to 2.0 was relatively straight forward
and not much different from other minor releases.

The first ever major backwards incompatibility release switch we
had in Python after the great renaming of the C APIs between
Python 1.1 and 1.2 (which was only visible to C extensions and
relatively easy to fix using a compatibility header file),
was the transition from Python 2.x to Python 3.x.

IMO, the only reason to do this again would be the removal of
the GIL, but only if there's absolutely no other way to get
around such breakage.

I would very much appreciate Python's releases not to introduce
such major changes anymore. A continuous gradual change is a lot
better to handle than non-continuous breaks and I'm pretty
sure both will get us to the same level functionality eventually,
perhaps even avoiding a few new mistakes along the way.

With that approach, the versioning scheme would just be an
implementation detail, which is good. Whether we call it Python
4.2 or Python 42 is really not all that important. Python
is mature enough to not have to pull marketing tricks anymore.

Cheers,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com

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