Dropping support is about as user-hostile as it gets.
Once again, how can you ask/require users to expend precious limited energy to re-program just to stay in place? It's totally obnoxious and completely unnecessary.
It's absolutely amazing to me that people can pay nothing for something and frame the party providing that software for free opting not to spend even more effort to provide bug fixes for an old version of their software as them effectively taxing them. This is especially true of python 2 which is was supported from the release of python 3 in 2008 until 2020 and further supported by red hat until 2024.
This is exactly backwards of reality. It's as if they were eating at someones home and had turned a cup off coffee into a week long stay during which they rudely complained when the host asked them to please do something about their pile of dishes, trash, laundry, and leavings.
Nobody is after all taking away your version of python 2 or ability to use and maintain it. It takes active effort to keep fixing bugs in software that may be network facing. If you want to do that maintenance you can of course but people it seems aren't going to be doing this for python 2 forever. If you disagree either take up the reigns or pool your funds to pay someone to do it.
The thing to do back in 2008 was to figure out when you wanted to switch and schedule a bit of time to learn python 3. Anyone who did this by oh 2009 or 2010 would have virtually no work to do now. Any work that has been created since based on something you were told 11 years ago was going away is most assuredly work that you have created for yourself and will be obliged to take up.
Anyone who did this in 2014 would have a decade of runway before they can no longer run their python 2 apps on rhel/centos. Anyone who switches TODAY 11 years late to the party can run python + redhat for another 4 years.
>completely unnecessary
It would be more work to do otherwise. Nobody wants to do that work. You don't and they don't.
If you don't pay anything the project gets to decide to what extent serving your interests is a worthy goal.
You don't have to fork it to fix it personally. You may also consider putting your money where your mouth is and organizing an effort to fund the change you want to see in the world. If you succeed the world will have additional value it wouldn't without it and owe you kudos. Everyone likes options. If you fail you ought to move on you have no basis for complaint. I think this is informative.
“ Nobody is after all taking away your version of python 2 or ability to use and maintain it”
No, but they are taking away the right of anyone who does this to call the result “python”, and that is user-hostile.
Why do you believe you have a right to call such a work python? Trademark when not abused is the one form of intellectual property that is trivially defensible.
If anyone can call anything anything then how is it even possible for the consumer to make intelligent choices? Having it be called something else allows your consumers to make an informed choice about using it rather than allowing you to incorrectly trade on the official projects reputation. Of course YOU might merely want someone to competently maintain python 2.
Others might opt to do so badly and thus damage the actual python brand. Worst yet others might opt to make changes to projects that serve their nefarious needs like folding in ads or data collection. Without a defining line between official and unofficial how do we prevent such?
Call it cobra and brand it pythons cooler cousin if you like.
No one wants to spend energy re-programming to stay in place.
Especially APIs.