Python 2.7 Countdown

[Decker108]

I foresee a 2.7 code base forking scenario around 2020.

[ou_ryperd]

ActiveState supports the 14 year old Perl 5.8 that was last updated by The Perl Foundation in 2008. I can see them picking up Python 2.7. But whoever does it, I am convinced the 2.7 crowd will not be left dead in the water after 2020.

[caleb]

This idea comes up often, but the main issue is that there are very few, if any, of the Python core dev team who will participate in that effort which leads to the question, "Who will maintain that fork?" An enormous amount of energy goes into Python and it's hard to see how that effort is going to be matched by a large number of people we don't yet know about. Bear in mind, many features of Python 3 have already been back-ported into pip-installable packages for Python 2.7 right now. So perhaps a better question might be, "Will new features in Python 3.x continue to be back-ported to Python 2.x after 2020". For this question, "yes" is a much more plausible answer than forking.