[issue32592] Drop support of Windows Vista and 7 in Python 3.9

[C.A.M. Gerlach]

C.A.M. Gerlach <CAM.Gerlach at Gerlach.CAM> added the comment:

What Eryk said wrt Windows 8 seems sound, looking at some additional data.

Per Statcounter [0], Windows 8 market share has dropped to 1.32% from 2.20% of all Windows users over the past 12 months, or 1.75% -> 1.01% of all desktop users. Extrapolating a constant linear decrease, this would imply a usage share of 0.55-0.60% at Python 3.9 release, or considering a more conservative (and realistic) constant-percent decrease, this would put the amount at 0.75%. For comparison, by Statcounter's same metrics, Windows XP which was EoL 5 versions ago is still at 1.13% of the Windows or 0.90% of the total desktop market today, WinVista is at 0.41%/0.33%, Win8.1 at 4.7%/3.8% (~4x Win8) and of course the EoL and also dropped Windows 7 is at no less than 23.2%/18.5%, nearly 20 times the amount of Win 8 today and dropping more slowly besides.

[0] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/windows/desktop/worldwide

Conducting a similar analysis with the NetMarketshare data [1], we see a 0.78% -> 0.66% year on year share for Win8, which extrapolates to a 0.57% share at Py2.9 release. Vista is much lower at only 0.15%, but XP is over 2x higher at 1.35%, and Win8.1 well over 5x as large at 3.5%. Windows 7 is, again, at no less than 25.2%, nearly 40x the Win 8 marketshare.

[1] https://netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx

Users likely to be most concerned with wanting or needing to use the latest and greatest version of Python are more than likely to be power users, enthusiasts and developers, a group that was particularly averse to adopting Windows 8 when it came out, was more likely to upgrade to 8.1 , and is more aware of EoL timeframes than the average consumer. This is empirically supported by the Steam survey [2], which samples a population substantially more similar to the profile of a developer than the average web user captured by the previous two surveys. Here, the numbers are much more stark: A mere 0.17% of their >96% Windows userbase runs Windows 8, vs. 2.10% (>10x) for Windows 8.1 and 12.4% for Windows 7 (~75x). Given an infinitesimal fraction of such remaining users are likely going to require upgrading to a bleeding-edge Python version but not their OS that would have been EoL for nearly 5 years, over a year longer than Vista itself  and 4 years longer than 7, I don't think supporting that EoL OS per PEP 11 for another >5+ years with another new Python version need be a priority.

[2] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam

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<https://bugs.python.org/issue32592>
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