1. I'm no longer involved with GNU infrastructure work at all. (Write maintain...@gnu.org to reach the people doing that stuff now, primarily Brandon Invergo.) But I will comment anyway.
2. Jim (Meyering) is currently the only active maintainer of Automake. Given that he is also responsible for numerous other packages, I imagine he would welcome anyone coming forward. 3. As an Automake user, all I can say is that I dearly, ardently, fervently, hope changes that will be made, by any maintainer, extremely cautiously. The long-term stability and compatibility of Automake (and Autoconf and M4) is, in my opinion, a primary reason why it has succeeded to the extent it has. 4. I have nothing against requiring GNU make, per se, as long as there's a decent chance of existing .ac/.am files continuing to work. Looking at NG-NEWS, I think that is true. Happy hacking, Karl
