[Python-Dev] What's New text on future maintenance (original) (raw)

Benjamin Peterson benjamin at python.org
Fri May 7 04:33:50 CEST 2010

2010/5/6 A.M. Kuchling <amk at amk.ca>:

FYI: I've just added the text below to the "What's New" document for 2.7.  I wanted to describe how 2.7 will probably be maintained, but didn't want to write anything that sounded like an iron-clad guarantee of a maintenance timespan.  Does this text seem like a reasonable set of statements?

--amk Python 2.7 is intended to be the last major release in the 2.x series. Though more major releases have not been absolutely ruled out, the Python maintainers are planning to focus their efforts on Python 3.x. This means that 2.7 will remain in place for a long time, running production systems that have not been ported to Python 3.x. Two consequences of the long-term significance of 2.7 are: * It's very likely the 2.7 release will have a longer period of  maintenance compared to earlier 2.x versions.  Python 2.7 will  continue to be maintained while the transition to 3.x is in  progress, and that transition will itself be lengthy.  Most 2.x  versions are maintained for about 4 years, from the first to the  last bugfix release; patchlevel releases for Python 2.7 will  probably be made for at least 6 years.

I don't think there's any point in being hypothetical about. I believe we've already said that maintence for 2.7 will last for at least 5 years, so let's proclaim it.

-- Regards, Benjamin

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