This is a Tinkerbell argument, but it's accurate enough. Python 2 will exist in some form, while people believe in it enough. But as you say, that support is likely to be paid.
Many deployments rely on more than a supported cpython binary. External packages and the rest of the server stack. The Python community has largely dropped Python 2 support. If you don't need that, great. If you do... Then what?
You could pay people to support your entire stack. You could upgrade. It's that choice that makes Python 2 dead.
You can still run Windows 2000. Doesn't mean it's not dead.
This old chestnut. Yeah, if there's enough people who are willing to pay for it (time or money), sure, Python 2.7 support will continue.
I just hope those same people have used the past years to do calculate the cost of moving to Python 3 vs the cost of Python 2 support. Expecting Python 2 support to be free or even easy is delusional/selfish though.
Yeah, I think Python 2 has been successfully killed at this point. There are a decent number of projects which still need to migrate (and I recently became responsible for a couple) but it’s been a long time since I heard anyone claim they can keep Python 2 forever. The maintenance burden of keeping Python 2 is rapidly increasing as libraires drop support.
Python 2 is popular enough that someone will keep up support for decades to come. Just making sure it supports new OS releases, and fixing the occasional bug, will not be a significant overhead.
Python 2 isn't dead. What they really mean is: "See all those countless developer-hours spent into adding features, fixing bugs, patching vulnerabilities for free in a language you use every day to make boatloads of money without us ever asking anything in return? Well we won't do it anymore. For free, at least."
Python 2.7 is not dead because the PSF stopped supporting it. Thinking it is would be equivalent to thinking that C is dead because Bell Labs no longer supports it.
I predict that Python 2.7 will continue being supported by some capable organization for at least the next 10 years. As a lower bound, Red Hat has promised to continue supporting it for RHEL 8 customers until at least 2024.
Python 2 isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Tools and libraries which drop support for Python 2 will suffer and will either revert their decision or be replaced with something else.
Er, why not? It's not like there's some kill switch in Python 2 that will make it stop working after January 1st, 2020. If it works now, then it'll still work, you're just not guaranteed fixes anymore. At least, not for free. As stated in the article, paid support options exist from several vendors.
Maybe that's true and maybe it's not. Unlike COBOL, Python 2 isn't inferior to its putative successor. Maybe people will eventually move anyway. Maybe they won't. Maybe they will, but not until after we are all dead.
Or maybe somebody will say bugger this for a game of soldiers, take the current Python 2, add such features from 3 as can be backported without breaking compatibility and release it as Python 4, and everyone will move to that and forget about Python 3 altogether. I don't know that will happen, of course, but I don't know it won't either. Prediction is hard, especially about the future.
Python 2 will never die. Ask Kenneth Reitz for example. He says he will use Python 2 forever. There are a lot of companies with huge codebases who never will port to Python 3.
Python 2 was originally going to be EOL'd in 2015, the announcement for which was in 2008. Only later was the EOL pushed back to 2020. So while it's only been officially "dead" for two years now, the writing had been on the wall for 12 years before that.
At this point it is stubbornness - I know software doesn't magically get ported and updated as time goes on, but I also acknowledge that if no one cares to update the software (or provide a replacement) in a 14-year window then that is on that package's community rather than everyone else. The baseline should not be dragged down to accommodate legacy software.
MacOS removing Python 2 support in a minor OS version bump was the wrong way of handling things, but in general you should not expect it to be available on modern platforms or be surprised at its removal (outside of pledged long-term support e.g. CentOS). And you can still use a VM or something, same as you would use DosBox to run old 16-bit software.
I didn't move the goalposts? I reworded what I previously expressed. If you want to see support, you can pay people to provide that support. Free support ends in 2020.
If you're not paying for it and you are making money off it, I don't see this attitude as being okay. You can ask. You can also be told no!
Python 2 advocates like to bring up the PyPI download numbers as some kind of "reality". But here is the reality: The PSF, governing body for the Python project, has decided years ago that Python 3 will EOL in 2020. It has given ample heads up for everybody to migrate.
Years. That's the reality. This decision didn't come out of nowhere. Don't expect a yes.
To be honest, I doubt corporations will give Python 2 up easily. Currently Python 2 codebase in use in production is probably fairly huge and is just working. Look at how hard it is to convince enterprises to give up Internet Explorer even though Microsoft itself says they should really end using it. Someone like Red Hat will probably keep maintaining Python 2 for at least some years more.
Hard to say. It may very well be that supporting Python2 for the next 20 years could be a tidy gig for a couple of people. I've considered jumping in myself.
Is Python 2 going to be kept alive forever and ever? Is there any other language on the planet that keeps a previous version supported years after a major release came out?
Red Hat, Ubuntu, etc. are going to support Python 2 for the duration of the operating system releases which shipped it. I would assume that Anaconda, et al. will have similar options for paid customers.
No one is saying you can no longer use Python 2. The community is just saying that if you do, you're more or less on your own. Python 2 won't magically stop working on Jan 1 2020.
Many deployments rely on more than a supported cpython binary. External packages and the rest of the server stack. The Python community has largely dropped Python 2 support. If you don't need that, great. If you do... Then what?
You could pay people to support your entire stack. You could upgrade. It's that choice that makes Python 2 dead.
You can still run Windows 2000. Doesn't mean it's not dead.
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