DEVOPSdigest

ActiveState announced the release of ActivePython 2.7.18, an enterprise-grade Python 2 distribution that incorporates the last official release of Python 2.

ActiveState has been providing commercial support for Python 2 since it reached End of Life (EOL) on Jan. 1, 2020.

As the Python Package Index download statistics show, developers are continuing to work with Python 2 resources months after the Python Software Foundation officially ended support. For many enterprises, that means they are no longer in compliance with internal support policies or even in some cases, external regulations such as the need for commercial support for PCI-compliant payment systems.

The ActiveState Python 2 EOL Survey found that most organizations intend to migrate their Python 2 code base to Python 3. However, it also showed that many of those organizations had not finished that migration prior to the EOL date. Some enterprises are unable to migrate for a variety of reasons, such as reliance on a library that currently has no Python 3 equivalent. For these organizations, ActiveState’s Python 2 support has proven essential in helping them maintain business as usual during their migration efforts, or providing them with a viable path forward should they choose not to migrate.

ActiveState provides organizations with:

● Support for the core Python 2 language and standard libraries

● Support for the third party packages, libraries and modules used in each customer’s Python 2 application

● Backported security fixes for Python 2 core libraries and third party packages

● Regularly scheduled patches and updates, which are required for compliance with regulations such as PCI

Jeff Rouse, VP, Product Management, ActiveState, said: “We’ve been providing enterprises with Python 2 support for over 20 years, and continue to do so for many of them today, beyond Python 2’s EOL date. But numerous new customers have also come to us in just the past few months to help them support their mission critical Python 2 applications. Some of these customers are currently unable to migrate for a variety of market or technical reasons, but others are not intending to migrate at all. In keeping with our core mission, ActiveState is happy to help provide developers with Python 2 solutions that just work, while making those solutions easy to adopt by enterprises.”