Bug Resilience Program of German Sovereign Tech Fund

Hi Karl,
given Automake is facing a lack of contributors and still being an 
important part of software like GCC or LibreOffice, we should reach out 
for help!

The German Sovereign Tech Fund offers a Bug Resilience Program [1]. They 
offer "Direct Contributions", i.e.:
 > Our partner 'Neighbourhoodie Software' provides a variety
 > of types of contributions to participating projects to
 > address known issues, improve documentation, and reduce
 > technical debt. Very often, FOSS projects maintainers
 > know that certain parts of critical technologies on
 > which they work contain vulnerabilities or security
 > deficiencies. However, the maintainers may not have the
 > capacity to deal with them yet […].

I think Automake fulfills the formal criteria. If you want, I can apply 
for Autotools. We can discuss this here or off-list.
I am a German citizen and I would love to see Automake / you helped over 
where my tax-payer money is usually spent.

[1] https://www.sovereigntechfund.de/programs/bug-resilience

Bye
Christoph


Am 15.05.24 um 03:18 schrieb Karl Berry:
> Hi Christoph,
> 
>      end of 2023 you shared the news that automake release 1.17 could happen
> 
> Indeed. Unfortunately since then I have had to attend to other priority
> projects, and there's no one else driving automake. I hope to be able to
> spend some time on automake again soon to bring the release to fruition.
> I have no ETA though, as ever. Sorry.
> 
>      There has been no public communication for the last couple of
>      weeks.
> 
> Well, I (or someone) is still replying to questions and bugs on
> [email protected] and [email protected]. Not about the release,
> though, granted.
> 
>      What are your plans regarding 1.17?
> 
> Release as soon as possible.
> 
>      Are there blockers?
> 
> Yes. The last pretest in December turned up at least one:
> https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=68808
> 
> It requires hacking a function in sanity.m4 to probe make for its
> "subsecond mtime" behavior.
> 
> There may be others, I'd have to look at the recent pending bugs.
> 
>      Is there anything we as the community can help?
> 
> Well, a patch for the bug above would certainly be helpful.
> 
> Patches in general for any other bugs, especially the recent ones, would
> be all to the good.
> 
> Other than actual patches, reviewing the other recent pending bugs to
> see if any others are important enough to require fixing before the
> release, or simple enough to just fix and be done with it, would also be
> helpful.  (I know there are a few other patches simply waiting for me to
> review and install.)
> 
> Beyond that, three years ago I wrote a message requesting more
> volunteers. The information is (sadly enough) still current:
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/automake/2021-03/msg00018.html
> 
> Thanks,
> Karl
> 
> P.S. BTW, did something happen somewhere that prompted you to send this?
> I ask because another person wrote me off-list today with the same
> question. Seems a bit much for coincidence.