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

"Martin v. Löwis" martin at v.loewis.de
Fri May 7 09:30:00 CEST 2010

* 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 agree with Terry: how did you arrive at the 4 years for 2.x releases? Bug fixes releases stopped after the next feature release being made, which gave (counting between initial release and last bug fix release):

In addition, since 2.3, we were offering security fixes for a period of five years.

So for 2.7, the question really is how long we create bug fix releases and Windows binaries, rather than accepting only security fixes, and producing source-only releases.

I'd personally expect that "longer" might mean 3 years (i.e. one more release cycle), and definitely less than 6.

Regards, Martin

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