It's hard to blame RH for that. Last time I checked, 2.5 was just released a few months before the first release of RHEL 5. Now they have software collections (https://www.softwarecollections.org) as a workaround, providing optional newer components.
I agree Red Hat is hardly the guilty one. I mean, RHEL based distros have a lot of plumbing and utilities written in Python, so it is unacceptable to upgrade system Python. Now, notice it's the system Python, the main reason of Python's existence in RHEL is the system utilities written in Python, providing Python language to customers is secondary to that. So there's no wonder nobody wants to touch it for reasons other than patching security issues, and users who try to run all the shiny Python libraries and frameworks using it should be banned from using Python ever again :) Just use a newer version for god's sake (and it's not that there isn't a dozen different way of getting a newer version).
(That being said, if obsolete version in RHEL fits the purpose of the user, that's great, and there is no reason for getting a new version, but it's wrong for those people to pressure developers for supporting old versions, and it's immoral for foss developers to continue supporting 10 year old releases at the expense of holding back progress. there was a post regarding that point lately, I'll try to find the link)
Yes, the problem is mostly with the users. The last time I was using CentOS 5 there were alternate repositories (e.g. IUS) providing non-conflicting newer versions of stuff. Alternatively, there's always pkgsrc.
> Last time I checked, 2.5 was just released a few months before the first release of RHEL 5
"Few months" being almost 6 months (Python 2.5 was released on September 19th 2006[1], Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (Tikanga), 14 March 2007[2])
[1] https://www.python.org/download/releases/2.5/
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux#RHEL_5
I'm not sure if you're implying that 6 months is too long or just providing more info. I don't think it is too long given that most distributions have stabilization periods where no new versions will be accepted e.g. Debian 8 was frozen on November 5 last year.
Long term support is great and all but Red Hat can only support so much, the libraries and any other ecosystem that is part of that software or programming language will be dropped by group that are responsible for it. That was my take away from the post/user comments.
In general Debian is pretty rock solid imo and as a good system admin you should stay a version or two behind and you should be pretty set imo. Waiting until 2024 is crazy in term of updates and such, I rather go OpenBSD route if you want to go that long.