Guido van Rossum started Python as a hobby project in December 1989 and named it after Monty Python. Version 0.9.0 was published in 1991. Python 2.0 (2000) moved development into the open, and Python 3.0 (2008) fixed long-standing design problems at the cost of compatibility. The move from 2 to 3 took more than a decade, until Python 2 was retired in 2020.
Since PEP 602, a new feature release comes out every October. Each gets two years of bug fixes and security fixes up to five years after release. Recent work has focused on speed: the Faster CPython project, a JIT, and an optional build without the Global Interpreter Lock. The language is run by an elected Steering Council under the Python Software Foundation.
