[Python-Dev] Future of 2.x. (original) (raw)

Bill Janssen janssen at parc.com
Wed Jun 9 18:13:20 CEST 2010

Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:

On Jun 09, 2010, at 04:42 PM, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:

>Many of them are not keen on having to maintain Python2 for much >longer, but some of them may have assets codified in Python2 >or interests based Python2 that they'll want to keep for >more than just another 5 years. > >E.g. we still have customers that are on Python 2.3 and have >just recently considered moving to Python 2.5. Depending on where >you look, motivations are rather diverse. > >It's certainly not fair to require all core developers to >continue working on Python2, but it would also be unfair to >cancel out that possibility for a subset of interested devs. >Even more so, since it doesn't really create any extra work >for those that have no interest. Note that Python 2.7 will be maintained for a very long time, which should satisfy those folks who still require Python 2. Anybody on older (and currently unmaintained) versions of Python 2 will not care about new features so a Python 2.8 wouldn't help them anyway.

There are two kinds of new features, though. Those added to improve (or at any rate modify :-) the product, and those added to keep the product relevant to a changing external world (new operating systems, new communication protocols, etc.) I think it would take a pretty strong crystal ball to be able to rule out the latter kind of feature add from the 2.x line.

Bill

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