Re: Automake (alpha) release request

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello Sebastian,

* Sebastian Pipping wrote on Mon, Dec 31, 2007 at 08:50:01AM CET:
> 
>   If the FSF handles this problem also putting out a
>   non-alpha-non-beta 1.11 release of Automake before
>   2008-02-01 I will donate k Euros to the FSF with k equal
>   the number of days left to that deadline

Your announcement of a donation honors you.  Let me address two parts of
this equation:

First, the lawyering work.  I don't have a lot of influence on the
progress there, but I do know that work has going on right before the
holidays; witnessed by some clarification questions from the FSF
licensing issues engineer.

Second, wrt. to Automake releases: I would have no problem doing a
1.10.1 very soon, using GPLv2+, which however installs the GPLv3
COPYING file into new packages (automake -a), and which has the lzma
patch from master.  And yes, FSF-wise there seems to be no problem with
doing a GPLv2+ release of the autotools, exactly because of this
licensing holdup.

For 1.11, however, besides the licensing issue it needs work, and this
is where you could help much more effectively than with a donation:
somebody needs to test the current code on several systems, and with
some packages out there.  The vala patches need review, and ideally the 
mono ones, too; except that AFAIK they still need a copyright
assignment.

The larger issue here is that since Alexandre left, there is basically
no official Automake maintainer, and I have little time, and it will not
be more in the near future.  Increasing that time is simply not an
option for me, and not a function of monetary flow in whatever
direction.  So what is needed is a new maintainer, or at least somebody
who can help out.

Cheers,
Ralf