Don't play with _privates

setup.py

@@ -58,9 +58,7 @@ def readfile(name):
     'virtualenv',  # for scaffolding tests
 ]
 
-major_version = ".".join(
-    str(v) for v in parse_version(VERSION)._version.release[:2]
-)
+major_version = ".".join(VERSION.split(".")[:2])
 
 # black is refusing to make anything under 80 chars so just splitting it up
 docs_fmt = 'https://docs.pylonsproject.org/projects/pyramid/en/{}-branch/'