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Totally agree, there's some degree of arrogance, especially in that section of the article. Maybe it's unintended, developers are not always good at PR.

bigiain 7y ago
> Totally agree, there's some degree of arrogance Me too. Anyone who's running 15+ year old free software which came with 6 or possibly 12 years of notice to upgrade to the new version (depending on how you count it) and is complaining that it's no longer going to be supported for free by someone else, is being quite amazingly arrogant... Maybe it's unintended, users of free software are not always good at being gracious.
- carapace 7y ago
  Yes, those people are arrogant and/or entitled, but you know darn well that's not the arrogance GP was talking about. It's also arrogant to grab Python 2 out of the hands of people still using it and flush it down the toilet. As choppaface said, > Perhaps the killer feature missing from Python3 is a flexible, built-in Python2 runtime. Then maybe the transition would not have met such pushback. If Python 3 could run Python 2 code (even at just the granularity of modules) then all of this mess could have been avoided. I love Python and I love GvR, but he stumbled badly here IMO (not as badly as Perl 6, but that's small comfort) by trying, in effect, to cannibalize 2 for 3. I don't enjoy saying this. I've met GvR briefly and he didn't seem arrogant at all to me. But I do find the attitude of "Hey, F. U." to those of us who want to keep using Python 2 to be pretty arrogant.
  - partialrecall 7y ago
    > It's also arrogant to grab Python 2 out of the hands of people still using it and flush it down the toilet. That's a strange way to characterize "decide to no longer volunteer their own time." And by strange, I mean rude. If you want somebody to spend their time maintaining python2, why don't you cough up the cash?
    - carapace 7y ago
      First, > why don't you cough up the cash? I am. Second, > "decide to no longer volunteer their own time." If that's all they were saying I would STFU. They are also telling everyone that, once they stop volunteering, Python 2 is dead. They insisted that the Tauthon project rename itself. It's one thing to say, "we won't support it", it's another thing to actively try to kill it, especially when they know people are still using it.
      - partialrecall 7y ago
        Making them use a name other than python is hardly any great hardship. Mozilla maintains their trademark too and nobody whines to hard about that. Just call it "boa" or something. Firefox->Icecat.
        carapace 7y ago
        > Making them use a name other than python is hardly any great hardship. It wasn't. (And Tauthon is arguably a really cool name.) But it does indicate that they want Python 2 dead. > Van Rossum argued instead that if the Twisted team wants the ecosystem to evolve, they should stop supporting older Python versions and force users to upgrade. Brown acknowledged this point, but said half of Twisted users are still on Python 2 and it is difficult to abandon them. http://pyfound.blogspot.com/2019/05/amber-brown-batteries-included-but.html http://pyfound.blogspot.com/2019/05/amber-brown-batteries-in... Like I said, if people were just fading out of Python 2 that wouldn't make me call them arrogant, it's when they insist that other people have to ditch Python 2 that I start to feel like there's some arrogance there. Like I said in a another comment, the only thing you get from switching to Python 3 is Python 3 compatibility. If Python 2 remains viable (which it will) there's much less incentive to use 3. Python 2 isn't broken or bad or anything, it's just not Python 3. We aren't being urged to switch because 2 is (so much) worse than 3 but because it's a viable competitor to it.
        partialrecall 7y ago
        > But it does indicate that they want Python 2 dead. Being less uncharitable, it indicates they want to avoid brand dilution (which is wholly reasonable.)
  - bigiain 7y ago
    In what way is "we are no longer going to provide any of our volunteer time to support Python2" even _vaguely_ able to be characterised as "grabbing it out of the hands of people still using it"??? Here: https://github.com/python/cpython/tree/2.7 https://github.com/python/cpython/tree/2.7 Join the other 11.5k people who've forked it on Github, and an unknown number of people who've cloned it without playing Github's high-school popularity contest... Nobody is ever going to take anything Python2 related away from you. There's a lot of talk here about "arrogance", all from people upset that some other people have decided not to do any _more_ free volunteer work on a thing they've been trying to get people to upgrade from for 3/6/12 years depending on how you count it. Those people complaining about "arrogance" are putting words into the mouths of the people who've done so much free work for them over th=e last 20 years, accusing them of saying "fuck you" and of "grabbing things out of the hands of people" and of "cannibalising" the code they wrote 15-20 years ago while providing newer better code (which happens to not suit some people who're not prepared for whatever reason to update their own code). GvR is _not_ the one seeming arrogant in this thread... (And didn't the last line in my comment you replied to make it abundantly clear I knew exactly what arrogance the OP was incorrectly claiming, and what the actual arrogance on display was?)
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > It's also arrogant to grab Python 2 out of the hands of people still using it and flush it down the toilet. No one is doing that. Python 2 is available, open-source software. The Python core team discontinuing development isn't grabbing it out of anyone's hands. Open source projects whose core teams have discontinued them in favor of an incompatible (either technologically or by licensing) alternative, or abandoned them altogether (or just not maintained them in a way that pleased the community), have often had maintenance picked up by alternative maintainers, who have often had to use alternative names for the independent continuation project. Nothing is taken out of anyone's hands by this. > If Python 3 could run Python 2 code (even at just the granularity of modules) then all of this mess could have been avoided. And we all saw how well starting with that goal worked for Perl 6. > But I do find the attitude of "Hey, F. U." to those of us who want to keep using Python 2 to be pretty arrogant. No one has that attitude (except maybe employers, but that's more about a desire to continue to get paid for using Python 2 than merely to continue to use it.) You are perfectly free to continue using Python 2 until the Earth is swallowed up by the Sun and no one will stop you, or even really care.

bigiain 7y ago

> Totally agree, there's some degree of arrogance Me too. Anyone who's running 15+ year old free software which came with 6 or possibly 12 years of notice to upgrade to the new version (depending on how you count it) and is complaining that it's no longer going to be supported for free by someone else, is being quite amazingly arrogant... Maybe it's unintended, users of free software are not always good at being gracious.

carapace 7y ago
Yes, those people are arrogant and/or entitled, but you know darn well that's not the arrogance GP was talking about. It's also arrogant to grab Python 2 out of the hands of people still using it and flush it down the toilet. As choppaface said, > Perhaps the killer feature missing from Python3 is a flexible, built-in Python2 runtime. Then maybe the transition would not have met such pushback. If Python 3 could run Python 2 code (even at just the granularity of modules) then all of this mess could have been avoided. I love Python and I love GvR, but he stumbled badly here IMO (not as badly as Perl 6, but that's small comfort) by trying, in effect, to cannibalize 2 for 3. I don't enjoy saying this. I've met GvR briefly and he didn't seem arrogant at all to me. But I do find the attitude of "Hey, F. U." to those of us who want to keep using Python 2 to be pretty arrogant.
- partialrecall 7y ago
  > It's also arrogant to grab Python 2 out of the hands of people still using it and flush it down the toilet. That's a strange way to characterize "decide to no longer volunteer their own time." And by strange, I mean rude. If you want somebody to spend their time maintaining python2, why don't you cough up the cash?
  - carapace 7y ago
    First, > why don't you cough up the cash? I am. Second, > "decide to no longer volunteer their own time." If that's all they were saying I would STFU. They are also telling everyone that, once they stop volunteering, Python 2 is dead. They insisted that the Tauthon project rename itself. It's one thing to say, "we won't support it", it's another thing to actively try to kill it, especially when they know people are still using it.
    - partialrecall 7y ago
      Making them use a name other than python is hardly any great hardship. Mozilla maintains their trademark too and nobody whines to hard about that. Just call it "boa" or something. Firefox->Icecat.
      - carapace 7y ago
        > Making them use a name other than python is hardly any great hardship. It wasn't. (And Tauthon is arguably a really cool name.) But it does indicate that they want Python 2 dead. > Van Rossum argued instead that if the Twisted team wants the ecosystem to evolve, they should stop supporting older Python versions and force users to upgrade. Brown acknowledged this point, but said half of Twisted users are still on Python 2 and it is difficult to abandon them. http://pyfound.blogspot.com/2019/05/amber-brown-batteries-included-but.html http://pyfound.blogspot.com/2019/05/amber-brown-batteries-in... Like I said, if people were just fading out of Python 2 that wouldn't make me call them arrogant, it's when they insist that other people have to ditch Python 2 that I start to feel like there's some arrogance there. Like I said in a another comment, the only thing you get from switching to Python 3 is Python 3 compatibility. If Python 2 remains viable (which it will) there's much less incentive to use 3. Python 2 isn't broken or bad or anything, it's just not Python 3. We aren't being urged to switch because 2 is (so much) worse than 3 but because it's a viable competitor to it.
        partialrecall 7y ago
        > But it does indicate that they want Python 2 dead. Being less uncharitable, it indicates they want to avoid brand dilution (which is wholly reasonable.)
- bigiain 7y ago
  In what way is "we are no longer going to provide any of our volunteer time to support Python2" even _vaguely_ able to be characterised as "grabbing it out of the hands of people still using it"??? Here: https://github.com/python/cpython/tree/2.7 https://github.com/python/cpython/tree/2.7 Join the other 11.5k people who've forked it on Github, and an unknown number of people who've cloned it without playing Github's high-school popularity contest... Nobody is ever going to take anything Python2 related away from you. There's a lot of talk here about "arrogance", all from people upset that some other people have decided not to do any _more_ free volunteer work on a thing they've been trying to get people to upgrade from for 3/6/12 years depending on how you count it. Those people complaining about "arrogance" are putting words into the mouths of the people who've done so much free work for them over th=e last 20 years, accusing them of saying "fuck you" and of "grabbing things out of the hands of people" and of "cannibalising" the code they wrote 15-20 years ago while providing newer better code (which happens to not suit some people who're not prepared for whatever reason to update their own code). GvR is _not_ the one seeming arrogant in this thread... (And didn't the last line in my comment you replied to make it abundantly clear I knew exactly what arrogance the OP was incorrectly claiming, and what the actual arrogance on display was?)
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > It's also arrogant to grab Python 2 out of the hands of people still using it and flush it down the toilet. No one is doing that. Python 2 is available, open-source software. The Python core team discontinuing development isn't grabbing it out of anyone's hands. Open source projects whose core teams have discontinued them in favor of an incompatible (either technologically or by licensing) alternative, or abandoned them altogether (or just not maintained them in a way that pleased the community), have often had maintenance picked up by alternative maintainers, who have often had to use alternative names for the independent continuation project. Nothing is taken out of anyone's hands by this. > If Python 3 could run Python 2 code (even at just the granularity of modules) then all of this mess could have been avoided. And we all saw how well starting with that goal worked for Perl 6. > But I do find the attitude of "Hey, F. U." to those of us who want to keep using Python 2 to be pretty arrogant. No one has that attitude (except maybe employers, but that's more about a desire to continue to get paid for using Python 2 than merely to continue to use it.) You are perfectly free to continue using Python 2 until the Earth is swallowed up by the Sun and no one will stop you, or even really care.