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

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Fri Oct 29 03:46:14 CEST 2010

On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 3:47 AM, Tres Seaver <tseaver at palladion.com> wrote:

I think that assumption may not be warranted.  If the current core folks are focused only on developing Python 3, but others are working on a notional 2.8, there is no necessary correlation any longer between the two.  In particular, the judgement of the current core about various tradeoffs in the Python 2 codebase won't be as relevant as it has been, in particular because the overarching drive (add features / warnings etc. which ease / encourage migration to Python 3) won't be in the forefront of the new group's perspective.

That's a fair point actually, but it would be a decision for the possible-but-not-yet-existing group to take as they formed. Given the likely divergence in design goals, it would probably be best to just bite the bullet and declare it a fork of Python 2.7 (py2x 2.8? RetroPython 2.8?). It would hardly be the first such fork - other flavours of 2.x with design goals that differ from those of python-dev certainly have a long history (Stackless, wpython, etc).

There are also IP issues to consider in setting up such a group though. The PSF takes care of it for python.org, but those contributor agreements wouldn't necessarily cover a new fork.

Cheers, Nick.

-- Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia

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