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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
We are volunteers who make and take care of the Python programming language. We have decided that January 1, 2020, will be the day that we sunset Python 2. That means that we will not improve it anymore after that day, even if someone finds a security problem in it. You should upgrade to Python 3 as soon as you can.
We need to sunset Python 2 so we can help Python users.
We released Python 2.0 in 2000. We realized a few years later that we needed to make big changes to improve Python. So in 2006, we started Python 3.0. Many people did not upgrade, and we did not want to hurt them. So, for many years, we have kept improving and publishing both Python 2 and Python 3.
But this makes it hard to improve Python. There are improvements Python 2 can't handle. And we have less time to work on making Python 3 better and faster.
And if many people keep using Python 2, then that makes it hard for the volunteers who use Python to make software. They can't use the good new things in Python 3 to improve the tools they make.
We did not want to hurt the people using Python 2. So, in 2008, we announced that we would sunset Python 2 in 2015, and asked people to upgrade before then. Some did, but many did not. So, in 2014, we extended that sunset till 2020.
If people find catastrophic security problems in Python 2, or in software written in Python 2, then volunteers will not help you. If you need help with Python 2 software, then volunteers will not help you. You will lose chances to use good tools because they will only run on Python 3, and you will slow down people who depend on you and work with you.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by lentilla on Tuesday September 10 2019, @06:51AM
I am not sure I agree. Two reasons: 1) it dilutes the available man hours available to the main task, and; b) volunteers that chose to work on bug-fixes and business-as-usual are extraordinarily hard to come by. Yes, it is a political move but; assuming that the Python community wants to move forward; this is probably the right decision to make. There is a third reason stemming from the above two: given that it is unlikely that people will step up to do the security fixes, then without this decision to move forward, people will grudgingly continue to support the old version until they burn out and leave. It sounds like the community has reached (or gone past that point) and are taking action to keep the project alive and moving forward.