Sumana Harihareswara - Cogito, Ergo Sumana: Kickoff for Python 2 Sunsetting Communications Work

Python's 2.x line will reach End of Life on January 1, 2020, meaning that the maintainers of Python 2 will stop supporting it, even for security patches. Many institutions and codebases have not yet ported their code from Python 2 to Python 3. And many of them haven't even heard yet about the upcoming EOL. Volunteers have made many resources to help publicize and educate, but there's still more work to be done.

So the Python Software Foundation has contracted with my firm, Changeset Consulting, to help communicate about the sunsetting of Python 2. The high-level goal for Changeset's involvement is to help users through the end of the transition, help with communication so volunteers are not overwhelmed, and help update public-facing assets so core developers are not overwhelmed.

During this project (starting now and going till the end of April 2020), Changeset's goals are:

• Create a concise page on python.org giving community guidance on the why and what of EOL
• Create and publicize a formal press release through the PSF
• Audit and update every mention of Python 2 on python.org, including in documentation and the wiki
• Develop a plan to handle redirecting https://docs.python.org/2/* (especially deep links)
• Publicize the new "what's up with EOL" page to a variety of audiences, respond to questions, and keep the page updated until PyCon US 2020 based on questions that come up

So, towards those goals, you'll see me with my colleagues:

• Researching, writing, and editing technical documents and the press release
• Corresponding with stakeholders, writing and publishing announcements and other communications in multiple media
• Initiating and facilitating meetings (I will try to make them very minimal and short; if I invite you, please let me know your response)
• Filing, triaging, labelling, prioritizing, and linking issues, such as in the website repo

For accountability, Changeset will provide reporting via:

• A publicly visible project roadmap, including milestones, probably within the pythondotorg repo
• A public rundown of all work completed at the end of each milestone, probably on the Discourse forum at discuss.python.org or on the pydotorg-www mailing list
• A brief written or oral monthly report to the Steering Council
• As necessary, updates to the PSF board
• If requested by PSF, blog posts monthly or more rarely, on the PSF blog or Python Insider
• (potentially) a PyCon North America birds-of-a-feather session in April 2020

I'm going to be asking for a lot of help along the way from the Python community: meeting with us, answering our questions, double-checking our drafts for accuracy, publicizing that EOL page to your circles, setting up some parties for January 1st. Thanks in advance and let's get the Python user base further along towards enjoying the shininess of Python 3.

from Planet Python
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