Python finally offloads some batteries [LWN.net]

Python finally offloads some batteries

Posted Mar 16, 2022 22:06 UTC (Wed) by milesrout (subscriber, #126894)
Parent article: Python finally offloads some batteries

Python is core infrastructure not just of many operating systems (Gentoo comes to mind in particular) but of the whole internet. If Python breaks, the world breaks.

The question I have is: why, when all these billion/trillion-dollar companies depend so much on Python, can they not dedicate some resources to its maintenance? Python would be so much better with like.. a handful more developers contributing to it. A handful of full time contributors that could maintain things like urllib would obviate much of the need for these disruptive changes. Python is famously undermanned and has been for quite some time. How many millions or billions of dollars have been made on the back of the use of Python by people that happily run it without even considering contributing back to its development?

Hundreds (thousands?) of developers are employed to contribute to the kernel. But we only need to look at Python and OpenSSL and other pieces of core infrastructure that *don't* receive that support to see that the real reason for this isn't that they are dependent on it. People don't employ Linux kernel developers because they want to support the kernel. They employ them because they NEED code to be written for their particular use cases. These other projects don't receive proper support commensurate with the level to which these companies depend on them because they can rely on the code just sitting there being maintained by part timers.

I think that Python should aggressively remove old crud from its standard library. If that breaks people's code.. well.. tough luck? If you don't want to contribute to its maintenance, then you can't expect it to stick around forever. If you desperately need [insert old cruddy standard library functionality here], maintain it yourself, inside the standard library or out. Get involved. Or don't get involved. Maintain it as a separate package once it's removed. But the inevitable cries of "oh my god Python is changing something and it breaks my code!" from people that have used and abused Python for decades without ever contributing anything back should not just be ignored. They should be condemned for what they are: the cries of ungrateful leeches on the goodwill and hard work of others.

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Python finally offloads some batteries

Posted Mar 16, 2022 22:30 UTC (Wed) by pebolle (guest, #35204) [Link] (15 responses)

> But the inevitable cries of "oh my god Python is changing something and it breaks my code!" from people that have used and abused Python for decades without ever contributing anything back should not just be ignored. They should be condemned for what they are: the cries of ungrateful leeches on the goodwill and hard work of others.

Once again it's proven that Poe's law is universal.

Python finally offloads some batteries

Posted Mar 16, 2022 23:31 UTC (Wed) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link] (14 responses)

Meh, the bit you quoted is rather melodramatic, but there is a point here: If you contribute exactly zero developer-hours to project X, then you should expect to get exactly zero say in how project X is run. Anything above and beyond that is a gift from the project X contributors, and may be withdrawn at any time.

Python finally offloads some batteries

Posted Mar 16, 2022 23:52 UTC (Wed) by pebolle (guest, #35204) [Link] (8 responses)

"ungrateful leeches on the goodwill and hard work of others" is not rather melodramatic, it is nauseating. Free software does not and should not include an obligation to contribute back. It's perfectly fine to only use free software. That's one of its tenets.

Moreover it is also perfectly fine to criticize a project as a mere user. "You made me rewrite my program!" isn't invalidated by "You should have contributed money, patches or bug reports!". That's basically a truism.

Python finally offloads some batteries

Posted Mar 17, 2022 0:06 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (3 responses)

It's perfectly fine to only use free software. That's one of its tenets.

Yes, but the whole point of free software is also to give users what they need (from the programming and legal POV) to scratch their own itches; the original developers are under no obligation whatsoever to scratch their users' itches for them for free, indefinitely.

Python finally offloads some batteries

Posted Mar 17, 2022 0:21 UTC (Thu) by pebolle (guest, #35204) [Link] (2 responses)

That's all correct.

But it doesn't justify name-calling users that do not contribute back. Neither does it mean that one shouldn't be able to criticize a free software project without having contributed back.

Python finally offloads some batteries

Posted Mar 17, 2022 0:45 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (1 responses)

I agree about the name-calling, but when it comes to “criticising a free software project”, there are obvious differences between criticism that is constructive, which should be welcome from anybody, and “criticism” that is basically vociferous complaints by non-contributing users that they're not getting their itches scratched for free, which developers should be free to disregard at will.

(If users can't scratch their own itches, the least they can do, instead of complaining, is learn how to write and submit meaningful and constructive bug reports. If nothing else, this would turn them into contributing users who are actually helping the project.)

Python finally offloads some batteries

Posted Mar 17, 2022 7:37 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

The other thing they can do - if they are businesses - is to sponsor a developer to scratch their itches for them.

I've just been watching this scenario play out on a kernel mailing list - some users have no clue ... it's tricky, that one came over somewhat as a culture clash ...

Cheers,
Wol

Python finally offloads some batteries

Posted Mar 25, 2022 7:13 UTC (Fri) by oldtomas (guest, #72579) [Link] (3 responses)

If the name describes the situation adequately ("leech", in this case a metaphor), I don't have issues with it.

That's what names have been made for, after all.

Python finally offloads some batteries

Posted Mar 28, 2022 13:23 UTC (Mon) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link] (2 responses)

> If the name describes the situation adequately ("leech", in this case a metaphor), I don't have issues with it

A leech is a parasite that latches on to an unwilling host and drains the life out of it to sustain itself. Some metaphor. In fact, the word is specifically used as a particularly emotive term of derision and hatred; it implies that the speaker *utterly despises* the person they're talking about.

Basically, it's a more specific way of describing somebody as a "worthless fucking cunt", or similar. On the offensiveness scale, it's high enough that I can only really think of one word that's higher but that I might occasionally use in close company when senselessly enraged; everything higher than *that* I wouldn't even *think*, let alone say.

Python finally offloads some batteries

Posted Mar 28, 2022 21:21 UTC (Mon) by pebolle (guest, #35204) [Link]

> it implies that the speaker *utterly despises* the person they're talking about.

Exactly. And the infuriating part, for me, is that this metaphor is used for people and organizations doing what I thought was the right thing: using Free Software.

Python finally offloads some batteries

Posted Mar 29, 2022 10:11 UTC (Tue) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link]

Maybe it's a cultural thing? A leech (in my experience) doesn't tend to harm the host, and they go away by themselves. They are at most temporarily irritating.

However, I just looked it up in the dictionary and it has definitions involving the words "exploit" and "extort" which are much more negative. If that's the meaning you're using then I can see the statement being interpreted very differently.

Python finally offloads some batteries

Posted Mar 17, 2022 3:36 UTC (Thu) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link] (4 responses)

I mean, in practice i've tried to submit bug fixes to some lesser maintained core libraries and got told to shove off no one wanted to review my fixes for this crap library. So I guess I'm a leech because I was told to leech.

Python finally offloads some batteries

Posted Mar 17, 2022 6:26 UTC (Thu) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link] (2 responses)

Several years ago, I uploaded a few lines of SQL to GitHub as a Gist. I wrote those lines of SQL while trying to teach myself about a specific domain's typical data model (if you must know, it was double-entry bookkeeping). It's a very simplistic demonstration of "when you strip all the complicated bullshit away, here's what an accounting ledger actually looks like." Every few months, some random drops a comment asking me if I considered use case X or Y. It's a Gist, not a proper GitHub project (no bug tracker, only one file, that file is well under 50 lines of code, and I'm being generous in describing a schema as "code", etc.). It's not *supposed* to support use case X, for any value of X. It's not even supposed to be used, you're really just supposed to look at it to better understand the problem domain (obviously, if someone chooses to run it, I'm not going to try and stop them, but it is very obviously an incomplete product). I can't imagine what happens to people who upload whole-ass codebases they wrote five years ago and never intended to support.

So yes, people will reject incoming contributions, if the project was never intended to be supported in the first place, or if they have decided to stop supporting it, as is their prerogative. Nobody can force me to do a code review if I don't want to (except maybe for my employer, but they pay me for that).

Python finally offloads some batteries

Posted Mar 17, 2022 8:34 UTC (Thu) by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958) [Link] (1 responses)

Python is not 10 lines on a pastebin.

Python finally offloads some batteries

Posted Mar 17, 2022 17:18 UTC (Thu) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link]

I never said it was. My point is that, even if it *was* 10 lines on a pastebin, people would still expect support, because people, in general, are unreasonable, and developers get tired of dealing with them.

Python finally offloads some batteries

Posted Mar 24, 2022 20:49 UTC (Thu) by dm93 (guest, #157602) [Link]

This was my experience as well.

I was told not to fix things because "it would clutter up the git history."

Python finally offloads some batteries

Posted Mar 17, 2022 8:43 UTC (Thu) by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958) [Link] (2 responses)

Well to be fair python only suddenly notices they are breaking code if the complainer is $$big$$ enough.

They don't care at all to break a library with only tens of projects using it.

Python finally offloads some batteries

Posted Mar 21, 2022 8:09 UTC (Mon) by nilsmeyer (guest, #122604) [Link] (1 responses)

> They don't care at all to break a library with only tens of projects using it.

Should they?

Python finally offloads some batteries

Posted Apr 25, 2022 7:33 UTC (Mon) by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958) [Link]

On the long run these sort of things bring people to using other languages.

Python finally offloads some batteries

Posted Mar 17, 2022 8:45 UTC (Thu) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (2 responses)

If you want a car to stay put, how much gasoline are you willing to pump in it ?

Python finally offloads some batteries

Posted Mar 18, 2022 16:33 UTC (Fri) by notriddle (subscriber, #130608) [Link]

If you want Python to stay put, don't upgrade. If you don't want your cake to go away, don't eat it.

Python finally offloads some batteries

Posted Mar 22, 2022 10:31 UTC (Tue) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link]

Obviously if I wanted a car to *stay put* I would not pump any gasoline into it at all. Refuelling it would just make it easier for it to drive off. :P

Python finally offloads some batteries

Posted Mar 17, 2022 12:08 UTC (Thu) by azumanga (subscriber, #90158) [Link] (3 responses)

I genuinely looked at how I could join the Python 2 team, to keep it going (with minimal future changes). Turns out the people in charge of Python didn't want that -- they explicitly wanted it to stop, even if people and companies were willing to provide future support.

Python finally offloads some batteries

Posted Mar 17, 2022 17:19 UTC (Thu) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link]

You have the right to fork (which someone has already exercised, see the Tauthon project). If you don't want to do that, then you were (presumably) expecting to get something out of the PSF that you can't get out of a fork, and the PSF is not obligated to give that something to you if they do not wish to do so.

Python finally offloads some batteries

Posted Mar 18, 2022 8:31 UTC (Fri) by milesrout (subscriber, #126894) [Link] (1 responses)

That pretty much confirms my point, though. There were supposedly tens of thousands of developers out there all dependent on Python 2. They couldn't *possibly* move to Python 3. They insisted Python 2 had to be maintained. A few of them, like you, may have inquired about contributing to maintenance of Python 2.

But where is the big effort to actually do it? I can't see one. There are a few basically-dead projects out there to maintain forks of Python 2.7. I don't think (?) any of them are still going. So despite all the handwringing and complaining, it turns out that the *revealed preference* of those people is actually that it's less work and more desirable for them to just port to Python 3.

It's a lot easier to complain or to inquire about something than to actually *do* it. If it were really important to you to maintain Python 2, you would have done it with a bunch of other people for whom it was important.

Python finally offloads some batteries

Posted Mar 18, 2022 9:26 UTC (Fri) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

> is actually that it's less work and more desirable for them to just port to Python 3.

Or to not-Python.