I'm a sysadmin who uses python27, centos and rhel on a daily basis and I've never personally installed it - simply for not knowing anything about it, nor has anybody asked me to install it. The name rings a slight bell, but it doesn't sound like anything a python package would sound like, so I can kinda see how I could have just overlooked it many, many times. Besides, installing numpy/scipy/etc is just a few commands away to having a similar build in comparison, anyway, so I've never even needed to think about alternatives.

I understand your frustration, but calling us assholes and lazy is just a little harsh. At this point, I'd have hoped it was understood by everyone that this wasn't the sysadmin's fault. How insistent or pushy or hoity toity are you were when asking? I've been woken enough times while on call after a 2.7 upgrade to pretty much give up on it, so even the request gives me a blinding headache these days. So yeah, I'll probably be a little grumpy at that request and I will take my time with it on top of the other things going on. If I was called lazy or an asshole for bringing these issues up, be ready to wait.

Hell, to flip it back on y'all, would it hurt to have proper shebangs? For every developer who asks for a 2.7 upgrade, I get three more asking to downgrade until they fix their badly self-deployed code, despite plenty of preparation. It sucks pretty hardcore.

That said, I have a flood of baseline rhel/centos machines to install soon, so I'll try to include it in my builds.

(most of these issues I've had are in larger environments where best practices are best-effort, through legacy swamps.)