long-term release schedule?

[Tim Peters]

[Ray Smith]
> ...
> I guess the "angle" of my question was it Guido and his team didn't
> get commercial backing to continue development of Python how would it
> effect the growth and commercial support of Python??

Well, how *has* it affected it?  Nobody has had a full-time job working on
Python since BeOpen.com folded.  Zope Corporation has been very generous in
funding Python work beyond the minimum that Zope Corp needs for its own
plans, but all of us at PythonLabs spend nearly all our paid time directly
on Zope-related work now (most of which uses Python, but decreasingly little
of which develops Python anymore).  For example, follow the bug and patch
trackers on SourceForge, and you'll see that the sum of Python work done by
Guido and his crew is dwarfed by the work done by others, and that's been so
for a long time now.

> My guess is enough people would be around to keep bug fixes going

That's been the case, although Python could sure use more volunteers to cut
back the bug and patch backlog.  Alas, you just can't find people willing to
spend their Saturday nights wondering why threading sucks on HP-UX boxes
using compilers nobody's heard of, let alone used <wink>.

> and the real value of Python is now becoming all the external
> libraries???

And dicts.  Outside of those two, nothing in Python is worth spit <wink>.