Please please please explain how that is inhibiting or restraining personal freedom. Or how it is inhibiting or preventing the expression or awareness of your thoughts or desires.
Oh, but you're expressing your thoughts and desires perfectly well though. You want someone else (not you, of course) to maintain Python 2 for you for the princely sum of of £0.00, so that you don't have to do any work on upgrading to Python 3.
And when the time finally comes around that those people, who have been maintaining Python 2 for many many years (for free), want to focus their efforts on an easier to maintain and more modern language that actually has a future they are repressing you?
>Oh, but you're expressing your thoughts and desires perfectly well though. You want someone else (not you, of course) to maintain Python 2 for you for the princely sum of of £0.00, so that you don't have to do any work on upgrading to Python 3.
That's how it works with programming language communities.
Not everybody is directly involved in maintaining the language, but the whole community has a stake (and a say) in the future of the language.
Furthermore, it's not just the core team that's responsible for the success of the language, but also the users and the companies that adopted it. Without those, Python would be some obscure toy language by a Dutch academic, and he wouldn't have a job in Dropbox etc.
There are lots of people that have been major contributors to Python's success, including large businesses that employed people like Guido, which also have concerns regarding the switch.
> That's how it works with programming language communities
Not always, python has a BDFL rather than a steering committee. But nonetheless it's the people who actually maintain the language who drive it forward.
> but the whole community has a stake (and a say) in the future of the language.
Comments like "the core team are repressing me by not updating 2.7" and random people making half-baked 2.8 releases don't help the future of the language.
Look, it's simple. Core team doesn't want to update Python 2.x anymore for a large number of good reasons. For some people (including you I assume) this isn't the decision you wanted.
But this decision was made years ago. Either move to a different language, update to Python 3 (again, you've had years of warning) or pay for a supported 2.7 version. Or just carry on using 2.7, it's supported until 2020.
Bitching about non-existent repression on hacker news archives squat.
So? For one, almost everybody I've read, even if they are OK with Python 3, say that that decision wasn't the best course the core team could have been taken.
Now, given that the decision has already been taken and followed through for 6+ years, should they now stick with it and see it through? It depends. There's no reason some of us should not just say "no" to that.
>Either move to a different language, update to Python 3 (again, you've had years of warning) or pay for a supported 2.7 version. Or just carry on using 2.7, it's supported until 2020.
Or you know, we can do all/either of those things, and still criticize Python 3 and try to get them to change course.
It would not prevent you from receiving updates, it would prevent you from receiving updates for free. You may of course pay somebody to update 2.7 for you. The Python Software Foundation never promised they would continue maintaining any release indefinitely, and it's unreasonable to expect them to do so. But in fact they are continuing to fix critical bugs even in 2.7, so they are being generous. Nobody is being blackmailed or repressed.
No, but it's reasonable to expect them to hear the concerns of the largest use base of Python, which is 2.x users - even if they decide not to follow them in the end.
Except if they just do it "for fun" and "for the sake of it" and could not care less for adoption or the community in general.
