Stop Supporting Python 2.6 (For Free)

(Note: I'm speaking with my "CPython core developer" hat on in this article, rather than my "Red Hat employee" one, although it's the latter role that gave me broad visibility into the Fedora/RHEL/CentOS Python ecosystem)

Alex Gaynor recently raised some significant concerns in relation to his perception that Red Hat expects the upstream community to support our long term support releases for as long as we do, only without getting paid for it.

That's not true, so I'm going to say it explicitly: if you're currently supporting Python 2.6 for free because folks using RHEL 6 or one of its derivatives say they need it, and this is proving to be a hassle for you, then stop. If they complain, then point them at this post, as providing an easily linkable reference for that purpose is one of the main reasons I'm writing it. If they still don't like it, then you may want to further suggest that they come argue with me about it, and leave you alone.

The affected users have more options than they may realise, and upstream open source developers shouldn't feel obliged to donate their own time to help end users cope with organisations that aren't yet able to upgrade their internal infrastructure in a more timely fashion.

Red Hat Supported Python Upgrade Paths

Since September 2013, Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions have included access to an additional component called Red Hat Software Collections. You can think of Software Collections roughly as "virtualenv for the system package manager", providing access to newer language runtimes (including Python 2.7 and 3.3), database runtimes, and web server runtimes, all without interfering with the versions of those integrated with (and used by) the operating system layer itself.

This model (and the fact they're included with the base Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription) means that Red Hat subscribers are able to install and use these newer runtimes without needing to upgrade the entire operating system.

Since June 2014, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 has also been available, including an upgrade of the system Python to Python 2.7. The latest release of that is Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1.

As Red Hat subscriptions all include free upgrades to new releases, the main barrier to deployment of these newer Python releases is institutional inertia. While it's entirely admirable that many upstream developers are generous enough to help their end users work around this inertia, in the long run doing so is detrimental for everyone concerned, as long term sustaining engineering for old releases is genuinely demotivating for upstream developers (it's a good job, but a lousy way to spend your free time), and for end users, working around institutional inertia this way reduces the pressure to actually get the situation addressed properly.

Beyond Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat's portfolio also includes both the OpenShift Platform-as-a-Service offering and the Feed Henry Mobile Application Platform. For many organisations looking to adopt an iterative approach to web service development, those are going to be a better fit than deploying directly to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and building a custom web service management system around that.

Third Party Supported Python Upgrade Paths

The current Red Hat supported upgrade paths require administrative access to a system. While it's aimed primarily at scientific users, the comprehensive Anaconda Python distribution from Continuum Analytics is a good way to obtain prebuilt versions of Python for Red Hat Enterprise Linux that can be installed by individual users without administrative access.

At Strata 2015, Continuum's Python distribution not only featured in a combined announcement regarding on-premise deployment of Anaconda Cluster together with Red Hat Storage, but also in Microsoft's announcement of Python support in the Azure Machine Learning service

For users that don't need a full scientific Python distribution, Continuum Analytics also offer miniconda which just provides a Python runtime and the conda package manager, providing end users with a cross-platform way to obtain and manage multiple Python runtimes without needing administrative access to their systems.

Community Supported Python Upgrade Paths

The question of providing upgrade paths for folks without an active Red Hat subscription has also been taken into consideration.

In January 2014 Red Hat became an official sponsor of the long established CentOS project, with the aim of providing a stable base for community open source innovation above the operating system layer (this aim contrasts with the aims of the Fedora project, which is intended primarily to drive innovation within the operating system layer itself).

CentOS 7 was originally released in July 2014, and the latest release, CentOS 7(1503), was just published (as the name suggests) in March 2015).

For CentOS and other RHEL derivatives, the upstream project for Red Hat Software Collections is hosted at softwarecollections.org, making these collections available to the whole Fedora/RHEL/CentOS ecosystem, rather than only being available to Red Hat subscribers.

Folks running Fedora Rawhide that are particularly keen to be on the cutting edge of Python can even obtain prerelease Python 3.5 nightly builds as a software collection from Miro Hrončok's Fedora COPR repository.

In addition to maintaining Fedora itself, the Fedora community also maintains the Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) repositories, providing ready access to non-conflicting packages beyond those in the set included in the base Red Hat Enterprise Linx and CentOS releases.

Providing Commercial Red Hat Enterprise Linux Support

If projects are regularly receiving requests for support on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and derived platforms, and the developers involved are actively looking to build a sustainable business around their software, then a steady stream of these requests may represent an opportunity worth exploring. After all, Red Hat's subscribers all appreciate the value that deploying commercially supported open source software can bring to an organisation, and are necessarily familiar with the use of software subscriptions to support sustaining engineering and the ongoing development of new features for the open source software that they deploy.

One of the key things that many customers are looking for is pre-release integration testing to provide some level of assurance that the software they deploy will work in their environment, while another is a secure development and distribution pipeline that ensures that the software they install is coming from organisations that they trust.

One of Red Hat's essential tools for managing this distributed integration testing and content assurance effort is its Partner Program. This program is designed to not only assist Red Hat subscribers in finding supported software that meets their needs, but also to provide Red Hat, partners, and customers with confidence that the components of deployed solutions will work well together in target deployment environments.

Specifically for web service developers that would like to provide a supported on-premise offering, last year's announcement of a Container Certification Program (with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and the OpenShift Platform-as-a-Service offering as certified container hosts) extended Red Hat's certification programs to cover the certification of Docker containers in addition to other forms of Linux application deployment.

Even more recently, the Red Hat Container Development Kit was introduced to help streamline that certification process for Red Hat Independent Software Vendor Partners.

But these are all things that folks should only explore if they're specifically interested in building a commercial support business around their software. If users are trying to get long term maintenance support for a community project for free, then upstream developers should be sending a single unified message in response: don't assume you'll be able to run new versions of open source software on old platforms unless you're specifically paying someone to ensure that happens.

I'm not saying this because I work for a platform vendor that gets paid (at least in part) to do this, I'm saying it because most open source projects are maintained by innovators that are upgrading their technology stacks regularly, where versions of components are already old after 2 years and truly ancient after 5. Expecting open source innovators to provide long term maintenance for free is simply unreasonable - regularly upgrading their own stacks means they don't need this long term platform support for themselves, so the folks that are seeking it should be expected to pay for it to happen. (Apparent exceptions like CentOS aren't exceptions at all: sustaining engineering on CentOS is instead a beneficial community byproduct of the paid sustaining engineering that goes into Red Hat Enterprise Linux).