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Full Version: Plea for Python 2.7 LTS
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Hoi Community,

This is a serious last minute plea to keep Python 2.7 alive on LTS please. I work for a company that rely heavily on Python 2.7. The EOL of Python 2.7 is really inconvenient. To soon. It is in fact killing the business. And does not help incubating. There is more time needed for the migration to Python 3. We are a small company and invested in a setup on Python 2.7 because it is the only solution today that can do the job now. We use a lot of good working third party Python products that are not compatible with Python 3. And will not be made compatible by upstream soon.

Now time has come for return on investment there are new investments needed because the Python Community decided that Python 2.7 is going EOL 2020. Python 2.7 is not broken ore insecure ore something. It is just an other good working Python language. PyPy is gone maintain its 2.7 version forever. Unfortunately PyPy is not compatible with our projects. EOL of Python 2.7 is a very bad Python-experience. The way the migration to Python 3 is arranged is not well thought of. With other languages it is just a matter of following the upgrade instructions of the distro. With migration to Python 3 whole good functioning projects need to be rethought of and rebuild. Python 2.7 to Python 3 migration is very painful and gains pretty much nothing.

I understand that developers and big tech are happy with Python 3. For the company I am working for migration to Python 3 is a time consuming and costly hassle. To much need to be done. It is in fact a nightmare. While the projects run secure and superb on Python 2.7. Furthermore Python 2.7 and Python 3 can run at the same time on the same server. For us as users of Python 2.7 there is no value added with Python 3. Just an other technique. Just an other look and feel. Developers say Python 3 is superior. But we do not care. We just want our projects to run. Legacy ore not. And Python 2.7 does the job. No complains what so ever. Python 2.7 does everything for us we need. Stable and secure. Thanks to the Python Community. Till now.

We only plea for Long Time Support for Python 2.7. by the Python Community so we have secure Python 2.7 on the server after 2020 from a trusted supplier. If the Python Community keeps Python 2.7 alive, the distro’s will follow. Helping a lot of Python users out of migration troubles. There is no objective reason to EOL Python 2.7 2020. It is just a decision made. Support can be extended. And compensates the lack of backward compatibility. A little effort to make a lot of projects and hosters and admins happy. If PyPy can maintain its 2.7 version forever and develop its other versions. The Python Community can. Bet that LTS of Python 2.7 by the Python Community will not hurt development on Python 3. Think that more projects can survive that way which benefits the Python Community and diversity in general. It is destruction of capital to EOL Python 2.7.

In the name of many unheard Python users: please stop trolling us with the EOL of Python 2.7.

Thank you in advance.

J.
The official support of Python 2.7 ends 2020. This is a fact.

If you want to have a LTS-Version of Python, then pay developers for it!

There are enough companies outside which are willing to earn money.
I'm really angry about this, because the most people who depends on Python 2.7
and want to have support, are not paying for it.

Another fact is, that Python 2.7 is still in the current Debian release 10.2 Buster,
which has support till 2022. Some distributions are using Python 3 already as standard and
other will follow. If a distribution has removed all Python 2.7 dependencies,
they'll drop the support for Python 2.7. It's a logical step to reduce complexity.

I can give you a real world example from my job.
Minimum requirements of availability of spare parts in industry are 10 years.
If you go to SIEMENS, you can still get very old hardware, but you pay very much for it.
There are companies which are still using the SIEMENS S5 PLC. You can get the spare parts only on Ebay.
If something went wrong and only one PLC burns, they have to stop the production and look for very old spare parts on the market.
Why? Because they did not invest in modernization.
(Dec-05-2019, 09:14 AM)DeaD_EyE Wrote: [ -> ]If you want to have a LTS-Version of Python, then pay developers for it!

If developers and companies want to get payed than do not EOL Python 2.7.

There are a lot of good working Python 2.7 products out there that can be used without the need of core development. These products do not exist in a Python 3 version. With this, new business can start and be incubated. Which benefits the economics of the Python Community in general.

EOL Python 2.7 is killing the business so no one is gone get payed! Do not repair things that are not broken. Python 2.7 is not broken.
Python 3 was first released 11 years ago, which left companies a lot of time to adapt to python 3. I suppose that if there is enough will to keep python 2.7 alive, these companies could also hire developers to maintain their own branch of python 2. Furthermore, converting python 2 code to python 3 is not that hard and is largely automated by the 2to3 program. Why don't they do it? They want other people to work for them for free!
@Gribouillis

Please try to understand a little better the plea for Python 2.7 LTS.

We are a small company. There are a lot of small companies that rely on Python 2.7. They represent a big market. Migration to Python 2.7 is giving them headaches. Time and energy that need to be spend in sales and services have to be put in core development. How lame is that? That is how EOL of Python 2.7 kills the business for Python in general.

We invested in the best setup we could build. We had no other choice than Python 2.7 because the products we need from upstream are only available in Python 2.7. Till today. They will not be updated by upstream. Never.

Python 3 is 11 years old. Still it is only mainstream among big tech. There is no technical and there is no economical reason to EOL Python 2.7. We now have to redo everything again before the return on the investments in Python 2.7.

The Python Community is using MyBB as forum so maybe that is a sign to switch to PHP and MySQL.

How big is the effort to maintain Python 2.7 by the Python Community? There is no heavy development needed for it. That is done now on Python 2.7. Developers can have there share developing Python 3. But please do not take Python 2.7 from us. We want our python 2.7 from our distro’s so that we are save and secure with good old Python 2.7 on the server. Now we also have to change distro to have Python 2.7 for a couple more years. EOL of Python 2.7 is a form of unfair competition.

Please, try to understand the importance of the economically and otherwise very clumsy decision to EOL Python 2.7. And undo the EOL of Python 2.7. Please.
First of all - who are we? Your plea should go to Python core developers, not here.

From my point of view - your plea/case absolutely has no ground - there was more than enough time to migrate. You claim "we are small company", yet it sounds like it is some world conglomerate that will have to migrate. You also mentioned it - the bigger companies than yours manage to migrate and you still didn't.

Second - Python2 EOL doesn't mean it will stop on January 1st. Just it will not be updated. If your setup is "perfect" (which I doubt) I don't see what problem you have - just keep going.

Finally:
(Dec-05-2019, 10:42 AM)Juron Wrote: [ -> ]The Python Community is using MyBB as forum so maybe that is a sign to switch to PHP and MySQL.
This is hilarious - you don't want to switch to python3 but will revamp whole setup and switch from python to PHP. Do you think it will be easier/cheaper to switch from python2 to PHP as compared to python2 to python3? If the answer is YES - think again and again and again till you reach the right answer...
@buran

Python 2.7 is perfect for our setup. We need an updated Python 2.7 on the server from our distro. That is what our company wants.I think that when we switch from Python to PHP we can earn easier and cheaper a living, with doing less.

You are the moderator of a MyBB forum. We do not use PHP ore SQL. But I noticed that competitors who use PHP and SQL spend less time developing and building projects and have more profit faster than others with Python 2.7.

PHP is in a way more easy for migration. Migrating this MyBB forum to the next major version is much more easy than migration the forums in our setup to Python 3.

Have used PHP en SQL before. It is not suited for what we want. PHP and SQL are security hazards in our view. Python 2.7 on the other hand is more complex, more secure, can do much more. It is amazing.

Migrating our setup to Python 3 means that we need more core-development than during building the setup. Much more coding needs to be done now with migrating to Python 3. Further more I like things from Python 2.7 more than on Python 3.

Again: EOL of Python 2.7 kills businesses. Try to understand.
(Dec-05-2019, 09:43 AM)Juron Wrote: [ -> ]
(Dec-05-2019, 09:14 AM)DeaD_EyE Wrote: [ -> ]If you want to have a LTS-Version of Python, then pay developers for it!

If developers and companies want to get payed than do not EOL Python 2.7.

There are a lot of good working Python 2.7 products out there that can be used without the need of core development. These products do not exist in a Python 3 version. With this, new business can start and be incubated. Which benefits the economics of the Python Community in general.

EOL Python 2.7 is killing the business so no one is gone get payed! Do not repair things that are not broken. Python 2.7 is not broken.

The EOL of Python 2.7 was right decision of the core developers. They want to focus on future and not the past.
You can still fork it and maintain the project by yourself.
Let me guess, you don't have the time and the knowledge to do this.
Then you need to pay someone. Very easy.

You can't force the core developers to a job, which they don't want to do.
It seems your entire business model is predicated on other people doing work for you. You are dependent on modules other people wrote, which have not been upgraded. And now that EOL has come, you want other people to continue to maintain 2.7 for you. This doesn't strike me as a very good business model.

And which modules are you so dependent on? Your post is notably lacking in details, and long on complaining at the last minute to people who didn't make the decision. You smell more like a troll than a struggling businessman.
(Dec-05-2019, 03:23 PM)ichabod801 Wrote: [ -> ]It seems your entire business model is predicated on other people doing work for you. You are dependent on modules other people wrote, which have not been upgraded. And now that EOL has come, you want other people to continue to maintain 2.7 for you. This doesn't strike me as a very good business model.

I do not like this kind of suggestive suggestions. We use Open Source for everything. We need it to be able to make a living so business can be done and people can get paid for work. That is the economics of Open Source. When you kill the source there is no business.

Now we have to pay people who only want it there way to be able to stay mainstream. Ore we seek an other supplier for our needs, because we can not have this migration bonanza every couple of years. After Python 3 we are gone have this again and again and again….

I like the idea of Tauthon. Hope it is gone be mainstream soon.

Quote:You smell more like a troll than a struggling businessman.

BS, trolls use PHP and MySQL to host a forum about Python
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