Backwards compatible means the patch adds new functionality without breaking the API for existing programs. Of course the new functionality would only work in w

Backwards compatible means the patch adds new functionality without breaking the API for existing programs. Of course the new functionality would only work in whichever release it was first shipped. Maybe you’re objecting to it being introduced in a 2.7.x patch release, but that's not without precedent for Python. For example, https://bugs.python.org/issue22960 https://bugs.python.org/issue22960 added a new optional argument to xmlrpclib.ServerProxy and was introduced in 2.7.9.