Stability and change

[Aahz]

In article <uDDr8.66496$S52.2342405 at news2.tin.it>,
Alex Martelli  <aleax at aleax.it> wrote:
>
>Linus Thorvalds seems to have done pretty well with picking TWO middle 
>grounds -- two parallel tracks for Linux, "stable" and "experimental".
>
>Without the former he'd have lost the commercial interests, and "normal
>people" who DO need SOME level of stability; without the latter, a crucial 
>hard-core of neophile hackers might have gone away in search of other, more 
>dynamic projects.  With both tracks, things seems to have been smoother.
>
>Why don't we start thinking of a similarly dual-tracked Python -- one
>track aiming at stability (in a "middle ground" sensible sense: strong
>commitment to not breaking old code -- introducing small new features
>and new library modules _is_ OK, else one can use a bugfix-only-"track"
>for some previous release), one aiming at frequent releases, innovation,
>etc.  

PEP 6 does allow for the possibility of a non-bugfix patch release, but
I think the Python developer community is still too small to permit a
full two-track process.
-- 
Aahz (aahz at pythoncraft.com)           <*>         http://www.pythoncraft.com/

"There are times when effort is important and necessary, but this should
not be taken as any kind of moral imperative."  --jdecker