I think it's worth noting that this is not restricted to encrypted e-mails but signed-only e-mails also.

The new revision uses the python.m4 version from automake 1.16.5 and keeps Werner's modifications with the 4th parameter.
See also https://dev.gnupg.org/T3354 and https://dev.gnupg.org/rMff6ff616aea6f59b7f2ce1176492850ecdf3851e

I am not sure if you assumption about the intention is correct. After all, the openSUSE rpm build does use it for creating binding packages for all available python3 versions. If you remove the functionality to find all available versions ("flavors" in the openSUSE rpm packager lingo), the RPM build would need to introduce separate calls of configure and make.

Format sys.version_info[:2] instead of cutting it from sys.version[:3]
as Python versions >= 3.10 have more than 3 characters for their version
string. Bump minimum Python version to 2.1 because the new
ax_python_devel specifies this.