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Python 2.7 is intended to be the last major release in the 2.x series.
-Though more major releases have not been absolutely ruled out, the
-Python maintainers are planning to focus their efforts on Python 3.x.
+The Python maintainers are planning to focus their future efforts on
+the Python 3.x series.
This means that 2.7 will remain in place for a long time, running
production systems that have not been ported to Python 3.x.
* It's very likely the 2.7 release will have a longer period of
maintenance compared to earlier 2.x versions. Python 2.7 will
- continue to be maintained while the transition to 3.x is in
- progress, and that transition will itself be lengthy. Most 2.x
- versions are maintained for about 4 years, from the first to the
- last bugfix release; patchlevel releases for Python 2.7 will
- probably be made for at least 6 years.
-
-* Because 2.7 will be running production applications, a policy
- decision was made to silence warnings only of interest to developers
- by default. Silencing :exc:`DeprecationWarning` and its descendants
- prevents users from seeing warnings triggered by an application.
- (Carried out in :issue:`7319`.)
+ continue to be maintained while the transition to 3.x continues.
+ Maintenance releases for Python 2.7 will probably be made for 5
+ years.
+
+* A policy decision was made to silence warnings only of interest to
+ developers by default. :exc:`DeprecationWarning` and its
+ descendants are now ignored unless otherwise requested, preventing
+ users from seeing warnings triggered by an application. (Carried
+ out in :issue:`7319`.)
+
+ In previous releases, :exc:`DeprecationWarning` messages were
+ enabled by default, providing Python developers with a clear
+ indication of where their code may break in a future major version
+ of Python.
+
+ However, there are increasingly many users of Python-based
+ applications who are not directly involved in the development of
+ those applications. :exc:`DeprecationWarning` messages are
+ irrelevant to such users, making them worry about an application
+ that's actually working correctly and burdening the developers of
+ these applications with responding to these concerns.
You can re-enable display of :exc:`DeprecationWarning` messages by
running Python with the :option:`-Wdefault` (short form: