The Python 2 v 3 conundrum seems to have been going on for an eternity. It must be putting off new adopters in their droves. For a start, you have to make an important decision about which flavor to install and how to get started right at the beginning, with no canonical right answer to the dilemma. Do the great and the good in the Python community realize how damaging this is, and how such a thing should never ever be allowed to happen again ?

How do you propose this be implemented? By abandoning Python 3, or shooting the dissenters who still insist on Python 2?

I have no idea what to do about 2 v 3 now. The grandparent is a genuine question, and my perspective is as a casual sometime Python user rather than a serious Python user. I am personally frustrated by the problem every time I'm tempted to get serious about Python. I'd love to know whether the key Python people acknowledge the problem in the way I've framed it and whether they have resolved to avoid something similar happening again in the future once this issue (finally) works itself out one way or another.

Are packages not updating because it's a lot of work, or because updating will break backwards-compatibility?

A little bit of both

There are ways to write software that's compatible with both Python 2 and 3 (using six for example: http://pythonhosted.org/six/)

But I guess it's mostly developers not having the time to update (it's easier if you kept it updated and not using some old constructs)