It can't be that difficult to do a one-off `find . -type f -name '*.py' -print0 | xargs -0 grep 'print '`, change the print statements to functions and add `from __future__ import print_function` can it?
Yeah, this was a very unwise thing to make, at least this could be postponed for later.
What? And make another language breaking version down the line? Better to rip off the plaster in one fell swoop.
It's better to make multiple breakages one by one than not doing them at all. On a plus side, maybe at some point you'd realize this print statement isn't that important anyway to make thousands of edits all over the world.
If nothing else, I feel that backward compatibility should be given toward's a language's canonical "hello world" example.