This doesn't match my experience at all. Most distributions I can think of had no problem replacing 2.6 with 2.7, and have offered fresh Python 3 packages alongside them as well for years now. My distro of choice (Fedora) has dozens of Python 3 libs packaged.
Ubuntu is aiming for "no Python 2 in main" by 2014 now, and Arch even switched to Python 3 by default already.
I'd go as far as claiming that the distros are actually at the forefront of and partly driving the transition right now.
That may be well and good for startups, or smaller companies, but larger companies with infrastructure running on CentOS/RedHat (and old-ish versions of them at that) still have trouble with Python 3. In CentOS 5 if you change the default python distribution to 3.0 > yum completely dies. Not to mention various other little bits and pieces.
Also we have many CentOS 5 servers but won’t let dictate our Python based software development by their Python 2.4. So we just rolled our own RPMs and put our python binary outside PATH. We deploy only via virtualenvs, so it’s not problem.
Sometimes the best solution to your problem is economically untenable, sometimes you currently don't have the engineering talent to allocate, etc etc.
You speak about economical factors, but doing broken deployments and using ancient Python versions (I’m talking 2.4 vs. 2.7 here, not Python 3) costs you much more money on the long run than building a new RPM every few months.
Nevertheless 2.7 (which was released two years ago) still gets bug fixes and no new features. So I really don’t get what this comment thread is about.
Fedora, Arch and Ubuntu are orders of magnitude too unstable for me to go near and I'm sure the same is true for a lot of other people.
More conservative distributions tread very carefully.
Well, yes, that's what conservative means. You're using stable distros, with older versions of Python, and it sounds from your original post like you're not interested in using newer versions right now. So... what's the problem exactly?
Python appears to be a playground for features versus a stable, reliable well tested and well thought out language these days.
And as for the standard lib, a lot of the additions e.g. in 3.3 is simply stuff that's been around and proven for years: virtualenv, mock ...
I mean, I respect that you feel that way, but I just don't see the same sort of cause for concern I guess.
Python has an extensive set of comparability tests and the system is quite modular. It also follows the maxim that complex systems that work are built from simple systems that work.
You don't have to use the new features. You don't even need to use Python3. Sounds more like "Damn kids and their loud rock and roll."
Fine example here (there are loads more like this):
You didn't notice the moratorium on language changes which was in effect for the last couple of years?
python, python27, python3, python31, python32, python33.
That and half of pypi only works on < python3.
Even the JDK isn't that bad.