[Python-Dev] Adding new features to Python 2.x (PEP 382: Namespace Packages) (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Fri Apr 10 06:34:19 CEST 2009

On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 5:53 AM, Aahz <aahz at pythoncraft.com> wrote:

On Thu, Apr 09, 2009, Nick Coghlan wrote:

Martin v. L?wis wrote: Such a policy would then translate to a dead end for Python 2.x based applications.

2.x based applications are in a dead end, with the only exit being portage to 3.x. The actual end of the dead end just happens to be in 2013 or so :) More like 2016 or 2020 -- as of January, my former employer was still using Python 2.3, and I wouldn't be surprised if 1.5.2 was still out in the wilds.  The transition to 3.x is more extreme, and lots of people will continue making do for years after any formal support is dropped.

There's nothing wrong with that. People using 1.5.2 today certainly aren't asking for support, and people using 2.3 probably aren't expecting much either. That's fine, those Python versions are as stable as the rest of their environment. (I betcha they're still using GCC 2.96 too, though they probably don't have any reason to build a new Python binary from source. :-)

People will be using 2.6 well past 2013. But will they care about the Python community actively supporting it? Of course not! Anything we did would probably break something for them.

-- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

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