> You're likely one of the few people using them, or you're paying someone to do it for you. Like if you're willing to pay someone for support then that's fine, but its not like this is going to be free.

It was kind of a rhetorical question. I know I'm not alone. Anyway, if I'm still doing Python at all in a few years I'll be willing to pay people to work on 2, or likely be one of the guys getting paid to support other folks' legacy (or fresh) Python 2 code.

But I already admitted getting more free work from other people is a reason to prefer 3 to 2.

> 10 unpatched vulnerabilities by 2025.

I can handle that. (I mean I can patch P2.)

> Do you think the twisted devs are going to support a deprecated python version for 5 years?

Maybe. But I know they aren't going to destroy the P2 code, and I can patch it if I really need it. It won't be that hard to back-port from 3 to 2, will it?

But again, I don't like Python for network code. I would use something else. If I really really wanted to write non-prototype network services in Python I would probably embed the interpreter in some other solid server to do the heavy lifting and just use Python to write the dynamical bits. But then I would probably just use Lua. Or write the thing in Erlang! What I'm saying is, if I had to choose a language in 2025 to write a server and my choices are Python 2, Python 3, or any other language, my answer is not going to be Python 3 or 2.

> Where do you see any open source projects that are compatible with python2.4?

On PyPI. But that's not my point. My point is that even 2.4 hasn't disappeared yet. There's going to be a "long tail" if you will of P2 in service.

> Sure that exists, but that's not a particularly enviable situation.

You do realize I'm not being conservative for its own sake, eh? I don't envy anyone stuck maintaining a 2.4 codebase, but I also don't envy the folks who have to wrangle with P3.

> That's the price you pay for using unsupported legacy software: not being able to use modern technology.

I just don't think that that price is going to be too high in the case of Python 2. I'm hopeful that there will remain enough critical mass to carry it forward even after official support ends and even with all the effort to deprecate it.

In fact, I think the effort to deprecate it is kind of rude, and a better way of going about the whole thing would have been to have the P3 interpreter support P2 code and let conversion to 3 be driven by its merits. The incompatibility was a choice, and I think it's the wrong choice.

Let me ask you this: If someone else, other than Guido, had come forth with a project called e.g. Python++ (just P3 but with a different name) and tried to get people to use it, how well do you think adoption would go? People would only use it if it had some seriously compelling features, eh? I mean people barely notice Stackless Python and Cython (just two examples of Pythons with extra abilities and compelling use cases) so do you think folks would flock to Python 3 if the BDFL weren't pushing it while simultaneously deprecating Python 2?

All I'm really saying is, if you think of P3 as a separate project, and pretend that P2's wind-down is just a coincidence, then it makes total sense to make arrangements to keep supporting and using P2. (Especially if, like me, you prefer it.) I don't think it will take that much to keep a fork project viable (Tauthon or whatever) since it would eschew changes and just be maintenance upkeep. It's not the first time users have forked a legacy project to keep it alive after the originating body abandoned it.

Lastly, when I said "PEP 572 only makes [Python 2] harder to kill." I meant that it makes people like me double-down on our commitment to Python 2. "From my cold, dead hands!" and like that.