Cycle 5: Astropy as a platform of stability (Clément Robert SWE)

Author: neutrinoceros

finance/proposal-calls/cycle5/platform-of-stability.md

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+### Astropy as a platform of stability in the astronomy software landscape
+
+### Project Team
+This proposal is to support Clément Robert's continued software engineering work
+on the astropy core library.
+
+### Project Description / Scope of Work
+
+- improving backward and forward compatibility of astropy with its own dependencies at large
+- coordinating with upstream and downstream stake holders to improve testing on a range
+  of compatibile environments
+- improve portability and re-usability of binary artifacts
+- simplify the development process for most contributors to the core library (reduced build times)
+- improve long-term maintainability of new APIs through developer documentation
+  and code reviews
+- tackle long standing bugs
+- fix incompatibilities with development versions of core and secondary dependencies as needed
+- extend support to future features of the Python interpreter (like JIT compilation and free-threading)
+- handle long-term API evolutions through deprecation cycles
+
+#### Roadmap Items
+
+The proposed work aligns with the following roadmap items:
+
+- Improve and/or maintain interoperability with performant I/O file formats and libraries such as HDF5 and Dask.
+- Improve support for using Astropy tools in heterogeneous computing environments such as cloud environments or GPU systems.
+- Support JIT compilation (e.g., numba, JAX, etc.) throughout Astropy core and coordinated packages.
+- Increase the learning and mentoring opportunities for people interested in becoming contributors and helping to develop existing contributors into maintainers.
+
+
+#### Project / Work / Deliverables
+
+Listed hereafter are the concrete deliverables to be expected
+
+- reproducible builds in "oldestdeps" testing environments (issue) 
+- split out extension modules to a `astropy-core` package (pre-APE)
+- developer guidelines for maintainable new APIs (email)
+- detailed, quarterly reports of bug reports closed and PRs reviewed
+
+> Note: 3 of these 4 items are, at the time of writing, being actively discussed
+> in the open with other maintainers and other stake holders.
+> I intend to provide links to where the most recent discussions are happening
+> but these may change over the course of the Cycle 5 review process.
+
+### Approximate Budget
+Currency: US
+Budget: $80,000
+
+I'm requesting funding for 800 hours of contractual work, over a performance period of one year,
+at a rate of 100$/hr.
+
+
+### Period of Performance
+
+2026 (Jan 1 to Dec 31)