The lack of core maintenance isn't meaningless (it's true someone else could step in, but it's not clear they will in any substantial way.)

More importantly, the fact that major libraries are dropping Python 2 support is not meaningless. (Again, I suppose, it's possible that people could fork IPython, NumPy, Django, etc., from the last Py 2 supporting version and extend support, but that seems even less likely than the core language getting solid support by way of a community fork.)

Unless you discover an internal bug in Python 2 in which case it will never be fixed. Depending on the source of the bug, your options then become: (1) maintain your own patched version, (2) upgrade Python to a version where it is fixed, or (3) use something else. I would personally choose #2.

>Unless you discover an internal bug in Python 2 in which case it will never be fixed.

Or the community -- including companies with huge resources and lots of Python 2 code -- will just fork 2.7 and fix it.

Except the community really can't and live to tell anyone about it (aside from a fringe fork), because the Python Foundation won't let them use the Python name for the fork, even though a fork is in every other way open source and labeled for maintenance purposes only.

Anyone who's every ported a very large project from 2 to 3 might end up despising the PSF for this purpose and might tend to search for a new language (Nim? Go? JS? Scala? Ruby?!). So much for the B in BDFL..

>Except the community really can't and live to tell anyone about it (aside from a fringe fork), because the Python Foundation won't let them use the Python name for the fork

Yeah, but a name like "Cobra, a fork of Python 2.7" will do just as well, and everyone that cares enough will know what it is and where to find it.