The updates have nothing to do with news parsers. News parsers are loaded dynamically, every time they are used. So are metadata downloading plugins. So are get books stores. Indeed almost all code that parses data from the web in calibre is loaded dynamically independent of calibre updates. The calibre developer whom you so blithely complain about here actually jumps through a million hoops to make sure those bits of calibre remain backward compatible with version of calibre and therefore python, going back a decade and more.
I agree with you but I also think that calibre should have update patches instead of downloading and installing 100mb file every 2 weeks. Calibre comes with its own python it is mostly self contained so it would be great if we had a choice for downloading just an update patch. I don't think this is something Kovid has the time though he probably could do it. It's the same problem when he was not willing earlier to move to python 3 as the amount of man hours required vs maintaining Python2 for calibre himself was easier. But someone came along and started porting calibre to python 3 and Kovid used their help to move to python 3. So if a dev comes along with better way to update calibre Kovid will probably accept it but as it is not a priority for him he might not ever get around to doing it himself.
