Re: Bug Resilience Program of German Sovereign Tech Fund

Hi Karl,
thanks for the detailed answer! I resonate with your concerns. I will 
only apply if you and others like Zack and Paul agree. Either say no or 
please provide feedback to my proposed text for the program application.

> If that means providing patches for open bugs, then great.
> That is what is needed.
> https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/pkgreport.cgi?package=automake

I am pretty sure we can direct them to focus on this.

> However, going along with what Paul said, I am skeptical that there is
> any real chance that someone from "Neighborhoodie Software" knows or
> will learn m4 + sh + perl + etc. enough to actually do anything useful.

I agree that the GNU Buildsystem is complicated and I advice everybody 
so seek alternatives. Nevertheless, it can be learned and improved in a 
reasonable amount of time.

>       > improve documentation,
> 
> I am equally skeptical that that would happen.

I would love to see any minor improvement, as the documentation left me 
puzzled multiple times.

>       > and reduce technical debt.
> 
> I don't know what that means. I instinctively shy away from such
> vague buzzwords.

It is a general statement. Nobody wants to rewrite Automake in Rust or 
replace M4 by Python ;-)
My interpretation for Autocond and Automake would be to adjust issues 
with newer version of the used technologies or adjusting tests to newer 
C and C++ standards and the stricter interpretation of modern compilers. 
It could also help out on the way to Automake 2.0.

> My biggest concern is that I do not want to spend the little time I have
> "explaining" to people, who are supposedly there to help, how these
> packages work and what the basic approach is. (And I'm sure that all the
> rest of us doing the development feel the same way.) I fear that is
> exactly what will happen.

Maybe you are right. I cannot counter your fear. Do you feel like not 
trying it in the first place?

Kind regards,
Christoph