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

[Steve Barnes]

On 04/11/2017 13:29, Antoine Pitrou wrote:
> 
> Hello Wolfgang,
> 
> On Sat, 4 Nov 2017 12:25:57 +0100 (CET)
> tds333 at mailbox.org wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> one of my long standing ideas to improve Python is to adjust the
>> release cycle and version number handling. In short, to simplify it.
> 
> There has been ample discussion in the past about changing our release
> cycle one way or another. In short, the meta-problem is there are many
> contradicting interests which would each favour a different solution to
> the problem.  See for example this PEP (ultimately rejected):
> https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.python.org%2Fdev%2Fpeps%2Fpep-0407%2F&data=02%7C01%7Cgadgetsteve%40live.co.uk%7Cf3da335b539641fb039b08d5238838ce%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636453990327468977&sdata=BJlayFVFBmTcA4DUoNwTwkeUO6uKrqy8RLlJHlqvOx8%3D&reserved=0
> 
> and the discussion that ensued:
> https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmail.python.org%2Fpipermail%2Fpython-dev%2F2012-January%2Fthread.html%23115591&data=02%7C01%7Cgadgetsteve%40live.co.uk%7Cf3da335b539641fb039b08d5238838ce%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636453990327468977&sdata=dodH8VnnkdkObTK7%2Bugu%2BinI5NACNF73WnvS8hjZZmE%3D&reserved=0
> 
> I haven't read your proposal in detail, but I suspect that it may be
> vulnerable to some of the same objections.  The big objection being
> that a significant part of our ecosystem (that is, to put it roughly,
> the more corporate-minded segment, though I believe it is a
> simplification and may include other segments, such as Debian stable
> users and maintainers) doesn't want to deal more frequent feature
> releases.
> 
> Regards
> 
> Antoine.
> 
> <SNIP>

Another minus point from my prospective - I work for a huge corporate 
organisation, (~300k employees), and we have to seek approval from the 
legal departments, on a per division basis, before we can use any Open 
Source software, (I and several others know that the per division bit is 
a ridiculous overhead and we are trying to get it addressed).

The approvers will let us get away with saying that we need approval to 
use version major.X, i.e. Python 3.x has been approved, but will not let 
us get away with requesting to use a tool without specifying the major 
version number. I suspect that the reasoning behind this is that most 
packages rightly consider a licence change a major revision.

So for us this suggestion would result in us having to re-seek approval 
every 12-18 months.

-- 
Steve (Gadget) Barnes
Any opinions in this message are my personal opinions and do not reflect 
those of my employer.

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