[Zope-dev] dropping Python 2.4 support in the Zope Toolkit?

[Hanno Schlichting]

Tres Seaver wrote:
> Hanno Schlichting wrote:
>> As a side note, we just started the community discussion about moving at
>> least to Zope 2.11 / 3.4 for Plone in a release by the end of this year.
>> This should take away some of the burden with Zope 3.3, but will not
>> change the Python 2.4 situation.
> 
> Why don't you plan to leapfrog 2.11 and go straight to 2.12 (which I
> thought you were planning to do anyway)?  That gets you onto a
> "supported" version of Python (2.4 is in lockdown), and makes the ZTK
> relevant to you.

Zope 2.12 with its many changes is seen as too risky to introduce into
our current stable series or into any release that aims to be released
as final by the end of this year.

> Plone's policies are in conflict, here:
> 
> - Ultra-stable about the Zope version:  you claim you can't update the
>   version of Zope used in a 3.x release from the version used in 3.0.
> 
> - Completely unsupported use of "cherry-picked" updates to the packages
>   which shipped with that Zope.

The conflict arises from Plone the product and its conservative policy
and the desire of a minority of community members aiming for latest and
greatest. Plone the product itself never steps out of the tight
boundaries of the Zope release. But whoever wants to innovate on top of
Plone using Zope or Z3C technologies often does.

The innovators are who speak up here and try to keep it possible for
them to work. But the vast majority of Plone users has no interest in
these and prefers the ultra-stable policy of the product. Plone has that
conflict of developer and end-user interest in many situations - this is
just another example of it.

Hanno