> If someone wanted other than the core Python team wants to step up and maintain Python 2, they are free to do so, it's open source.

Only if they name it something completely different from python or py-anything. Guido refuses to allow anyone to just step in to maintain py2.

Tauthon is a project that aims to keep compatability with py2 while adding whatever features of py3 that won't break py2 and to have a maintained py2.

https://github.com/naftaliharris/tauthon