[Python-Dev] PEP 11: Dropping support for ten year old systems

["Martin v. Löwis"]

> EOL dates of prominent Linux distribution :

I think I would need more information than that. Nick's proposal was
more specific: when does the vendor stop producing patches? This is
a clear criterion, and one that I support.

> RHEL:
> https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata/

My interpretation: Python support until end of production phase 3 (7 years).

> Ubuntu:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ubuntu_releases#Version_timeline
> (http://www.ubuntu.com/products/ubuntu/release-cycle seems to be down)

I'd prefer something more official than Wikipedia, though.

> SuSe
> http://support.novell.com/lifecycle/

My interpretation: Python support until end of Extended support phase
(7 years).

So by this policy, RHEL and SuSE users would be off worse than with
my original proposal (10 years).

> Considering the nature of the Fedora project, dropping unsupported fedora 
> distributions may or may not be helpful for Pyhton and it's users.

Again, for Linux, I think the issue is somewhat less critical: in terms
of portability and ABI stability, it seems like they manage best (i.e.
we have least version-dependent code for Linux in Python, probably
because a "Linux version" doesn't exist in the first place, so
distributions must provide source and binary compatibility even
across vendors, making such support across versions more easy).

> Also, it is not clear what to do about distributions/OSs 
> without any official EOL or life cycles.

Here my proposal stands: 10 years, by default.

Regards,
Martin