Yes, the python2 package is clearly marked “legacy”. it’s there in case someone absolutely needs it but should be avoided if at all possible. It is no longer “widely used”. All of the Python science stack (numpy/scipy…) have dropped support for Python 2 already. Sure, folks are free to keep supporting it, but as far as the Python developers are concerned, Python 2 is EOL.
I think you have the wrong idea. Linux distributions are downstream. If upstream drops support, why and how will Linux distributions still support some software? Who will fix bugs in the tool, for example?
I’ve really never thought of Linux as keeping backwards compatibility till eternity. it’s just that a lot of users tend to be technically advanced enough to be able to keep old tools working (or they get forked and improved), but there’s a limit to how long tools that upstream developers have declared to be deprecated will be kept.
If you haven’t had a look already, here’s the pip page on pypi—it needs python >= 3.6 now.
Here’s the deprecation notice:
https://pip.pypa.io/en/latest/development/release-process/#python-2-support
About sh: as far as I know, it’s a specification, not a tool. On Fedora, it tends to default to bash (but I haven’t done a clean Fedora install in ages so it could point to another shell implementation):
$ ls -lash /usr/bin/sh
0 lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 4 Jul 21 19:34 /usr/bin/sh -> bash
And in general, the answer remains the same: if developers of a tool drop support for a feature etc., so will Fedora. We follow upstream quite closely.
The suggested thing to do here, as noted by the pip 2 docs and Python community docs in general, is to migrate to Python 3 (which has been around long enough now to not be still considered “new”). There’s even 2to3 to help with the migration