Cycle 5: Aperio Software participation in release team and OpenAstronomy infrastructure

[astrofrog]

This is a funding request for me to work on the astropy release team, and for @Cadair and I to work on related shared OpenAstronomy infrastructure (e.g. wheel building workflows), since these are related to the release team.

[kelle]

It would be useful for this funding request to have a budget range.

[eteq]

Please react to this comment to vote on this proposal ( 👍, 👎 or no reaction for +0)

[eteq]

The Cycle 5 funding request process has been hugely successful! On the downside, that means our funds are severely oversubscribed. Even after the Finance Committee and SPOC have taken into consideration community feedback/voting and alignment with the roadmap, there are still more funding requests than we can afford in 2026.

We would like to stretch the budget as far as possible, and to fund as many activities as possible, while making sure the Project remains volunteer-driven. Hence, we would like to know if this project will still meet its deliverables if minimum your budget is reduced by 25%, 50%, or 100%. Or if there’s some other minimum, feel free to specify that instead.

As a reminder, there will be more funding for 2027 and we expect the Cycle 6 call for 2027 funding requests to begin in the Fall of 2026.

Thank you for your engagement and understanding as we continue to optimize our funding and budgeting processes and the balance of volunteer vs funded work! (@astrofrog )

[astrofrog]

The minimum useful budget provided here is 60 hours (USD 9000). In 2025, I spent 41 hours on the release team so far. It is likely that in 2026 we may need to support an 'LTS-lite' for 7.2.x which may require a bit more effort, so 60 hours is already on the low side - however we would be willing to cut this down to 50 hours (USD 7500) as this should hopefully still allow us to keep the lights on.