In some cases, if they have to break it, they have to break it. CPython developers are notorious for writing PEP and takes so many iterations, debate till end of the world, in order for the developers to accept and publish a PEP.

While I do not speak for any of them, what the blog post is trying to say is they have made a mistake with the 2 to 3 transition by introducing so many breaking changes. Instead, they have acknowledged this mistake, and will work very hard to not break anymore. But they also want to reserve a tiny room so they are not called "you lied to us!" Perhaps some fundamental change has to be made.

If there is one person who hates breakage, it will be Linus.

See http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1710.3/02487.html

He made it clear that over the years, there has been very few exceptions allowed. On the contrary, he mentioned that kernel internal APIs are fine to break.

What we want to achieve in general, according to Linus, is avoid breaking user APIs (or userland in Linux). But rest assure, when some new language feature added, or changed, or broken in CPython, you can expect a PEP.

Lastly, you still have the option to send the devs (including Guido) an angry email on python-dev :-) The devs are users themselves, so I am sure they are sympathetic with the pains in the 2-to-3 transition.