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Because we use the versions field to indicate which versions a patch will be applied to, if it is, and I created this bug as a feature request, and as such it is not a candidate for 2.7.
Changing list to string for shell=True is a behavior change (currently excess list elements are passed to the shell...and I don't *know* that that is useless, someone might be exploiting it) and hard to get right. Changing string to list might be possible on unix using shlex, but is a distinctly non-trivial change, would need to be considered carefully with regard to its implications, and I have no idea what it would mean on Windows.
Since 2.7 is in RC status, there is no way such a fix will be accepted for 2.7. You can try to make a case for this proposal as a bug fix for 2.7.1, but I'm not sanguine about its chances. Personally I'm -0.5 on such a change. I think it is better to leave the control of the command formatting in the hands of the programmer. Doing such a conversion is too close to guessing for my taste.
If you want a wider selection of opinions you can post the issue to python-dev and request feedback.