[Python-Dev] 2.7 is here until 2020, please don't call it a waste.

[Toshio Kuratomi]

On May 30, 2015 1:56 AM, "Nick Coghlan" <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Being ready, willing and able to handle the kind of situation created
> by the Python 2->3 community transition is a large part of what it
> means to offer commercial support for community driven open source
> projects, as it buys customers' time for either migration technologies
> to mature to a point where the cost of migration drops dramatically,
> for the newer version of a platform to move far enough ahead of the
> legacy version for there to be a clear and compelling business case
> for forward porting existing software, or (as is the case we're aiming
> to engineer for Python), both.
>
Earlier, you said that it had been a surprise that people were against this
change.  I'd just point out that the reason is bound up in what you say
here.  Porting performance features from python 3 to python 2 has the
disadvantage of cutting into a compelling business case for users to move
forward to python 3.[1]  so doing this has a cost to python 3 adoption.
But, the question is whether there is a benefit that outweighs that cost.
I think seeing more steady, reliable contributors to python core is a very
large payment.  Sure, for now that payment is aimed at extending the legs
on the legacy version of python but at some point in the future python 2's
legs will be well and truly exhausted.  When that happens both the
developers who have gained the skill of contributing to cpython and the
companies who have invested money in training people to be cpython
contributors will have to decide whether to give up on all of that or
continue to utilize those skills and investments by bettering python 3.
I'd hope that we can prove ourselves a welcoming enough community that
they'd choose to stay.

-Toshio

[1] In fact, performance differences are a rather safe way to build
compelling business cases for forwards porting.  Safe because it is a
difference (unlike api and feature differences) that will not negatively
affect your ability to incrementally move your code to python 3.
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