Python on IBM I-series/AS400

Question

IBM has many open source technology stacks in their i-series machines. Does anyone know whether IBM officially provides support for Python language like they do for native RPG/CL language ??

Answer 1

Officially, IBM does not provide support.
https://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=nas8N1021450

The IBM i Open Source Solutions product is governed by an IBM Agreement for Non-warranted license which states "IBM DOES NOT PROVIDE SUPPORT OF ANY KIND, UNLESS IBM SPECIFIES OTHERWISE. " IBM does not provide support. Some of the open source delivered with Open Source Solutions is delivered under its own open source license (eg GPL or LGPL),. All in all, not covered via IBM support.

In practice, the various open-source communities/forums include IBM personnel

For usage issues, IBM recommends reviewing open source communities for discussions and questions. Some useful links are:
Ryver community at http://ibm.biz/ibmioss-chat , but it does require registration to join the "team" https://ibmioss.ryver.com/application/signup/members/9tJsXDG7_iSSi1Q
IBM i Open Source wiki (community managed) https://bitbucket.org/ibmi/opensource/wiki
IBM i OSS on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12126719/about
IBM Systems Mag blog ("Open your i") http://www.ibmsystemsmag.com/Blogs
Midrange mailing list http://archive.midrange.com/opensource/ .
Generally, IBM subject matter experts are responsive to community finds of Open Source issues across many forums. Open Source projects are often receptive of input from user communities. However, we do not plan to produce a PTF for every little thing found, aka, missing a piece for some new attempt to compile a build. Those missing pieces can be found in online Open Source projects that have been updated based on user input.
Another important link for Open Source for IBM i is http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/ibmi/techupdates/opensource This link contains many associated resources and links for

Answer 2

IBM provides Python 2.7 and 3.6 for PASE, the AIX-like compatibility environment. All the official IBM open source efforts are focused on PASE, because it's easier to port POSIX stuff to it than to the QSYS.LIB environment.

The support for the open source stuff, including Python, is "official" in the sense that actual IBM personnel are maintaining them and providing assistance via forums and mailing lists and the like. But it's not at the same level as for RPG or CL. There are a few rough edges when it comes to the communication between PASE and QSYS.LIB; and though incompatibilities between PASE and mainstream Linux and Unix distributions are relatively small, they are still enough that automated package tools like pip may or may not work for extensions that require compilation to binary code (such as NumPy for Python). IBM is working on increasing the number of this kind of package available for PASE . Pure-Python packages don't pose any problem and can already be installed and used in the normal way.