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I never knew if this was a cynic's answer or truthful, but I was told by my manager at one point that RedHat's OS is superglued to python2 and spends a lot of m

I never knew if this was a cynic's answer or truthful, but I was told by my manager at one point that RedHat's OS is superglued to python2 and spends a lot of money to keep python2 in good working order. I highly expect it's a cynic's response and please read it as such until someone in-the-know can retort my post.

maweki 7y ago
A lot of tooling (yum, for example) was written in python. This all takes a lot of time to port, especially gtk/gobject stuff, but nowadays this is all written for python3 or JavaScript or Vala.
navigatr 7y ago
Red Hat has long support contracts for their server OSes that shipped with Python 2 when it was still kosher to do so. That means they'll patch Python 2 should vulnerabilities be found on their OS.
- ianai 7y ago
  It’s a pain from the outside looking into their business. Their contracts, though, are their business.
  - int_19h 7y ago
    Those support contracts aren't cheap, though. I don't think they're getting the short end of the stick here. If anything, the companies that run lots of Python 2 code in the house that haven't migrated yet - which is not uncommon in the enterprise - have the incentive to run that code on RedHat, if they aren't doing so already. I wouldn't even be surprised if they provide support contracts specifically for Python 2 on their newer OSes. ActiveState announced that they'll continue providing paid support for Python 2 on all platforms, so some people at least feel like there's a business model there... https://www.activestate.com/company/press/press-releases/activestate-offers-extended-support-for-python-2-beyond-eol/ https://www.activestate.com/company/press/press-releases/act...
geofft 7y ago
I don't think that's true, or at least it's no longer true: RHEL 8 does not ship with Python 2 by default. https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2018/11/14/python-in-rhel-8/ https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2018/11/14/python-in-rhel... Red Hat software that depends on Python, like yum, is in Python 3. I think it is true (as of pretty recently) that Red Hat is the only company employing a Python core dev to work on Python core dev stuff full time (see https://discuss.python.org/t/official-list-of-core-developers/924/2 https://discuss.python.org/t/official-list-of-core-developer...). But the core dev team is focused on Python 3, so that isn't a sign of Red Hat's Python 2 commitment either.
hathawsh 7y ago
See the RHEL release schedule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux#Version_history_and_timeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux#Versi... RHEL 6/7 and Centos 6/7 will support Python 2 until at least mid-2024.
mkesper 7y ago
There was no way updating the system Python in Rh/CentOS6 from 2.6 to 2.7 as that broke system scripts. You could only use 2.7 in non-standard paths (or Python 3).

maweki 7y ago

A lot of tooling (yum, for example) was written in python. This all takes a lot of time to port, especially gtk/gobject stuff, but nowadays this is all written for python3 or JavaScript or Vala.

navigatr 7y ago

Red Hat has long support contracts for their server OSes that shipped with Python 2 when it was still kosher to do so. That means they'll patch Python 2 should vulnerabilities be found on their OS.

ianai 7y ago
It’s a pain from the outside looking into their business. Their contracts, though, are their business.
- int_19h 7y ago
  Those support contracts aren't cheap, though. I don't think they're getting the short end of the stick here. If anything, the companies that run lots of Python 2 code in the house that haven't migrated yet - which is not uncommon in the enterprise - have the incentive to run that code on RedHat, if they aren't doing so already. I wouldn't even be surprised if they provide support contracts specifically for Python 2 on their newer OSes. ActiveState announced that they'll continue providing paid support for Python 2 on all platforms, so some people at least feel like there's a business model there... https://www.activestate.com/company/press/press-releases/activestate-offers-extended-support-for-python-2-beyond-eol/ https://www.activestate.com/company/press/press-releases/act...

geofft 7y ago

I don't think that's true, or at least it's no longer true: RHEL 8 does not ship with Python 2 by default. https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2018/11/14/python-in-rhel-8/ https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2018/11/14/python-in-rhel... Red Hat software that depends on Python, like yum, is in Python 3. I think it is true (as of pretty recently) that Red Hat is the only company employing a Python core dev to work on Python core dev stuff full time (see https://discuss.python.org/t/official-list-of-core-developers/924/2 https://discuss.python.org/t/official-list-of-core-developer...). But the core dev team is focused on Python 3, so that isn't a sign of Red Hat's Python 2 commitment either.

hathawsh 7y ago

See the RHEL release schedule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux#Version_history_and_timeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux#Versi... RHEL 6/7 and Centos 6/7 will support Python 2 until at least mid-2024.

mkesper 7y ago

There was no way updating the system Python in Rh/CentOS6 from 2.6 to 2.7 as that broke system scripts. You could only use 2.7 in non-standard paths (or Python 3).