ROS Fuerte Planning SIGs

We're trying a new way of planning our next ROS Distribution, ROS Fuerte, in order to make it easier for people to get involved and also handle the breadth of areas that ROS-related software deals with.

If you go to:

http://www.ros.org/wiki/fuerte/Planning

You will see an editable list of Special Interest Groups (SIGs). Below each SIG is a brief description as well as a signup list. We have seeded the list so that people have some examples to go by.

The process is very simple:

1. Propose an SIG: anyone can propose an SIG. Please only propose an SIG if you are willing to contribute.
2. Signup for an SIG: anyone can signup for an SIG. Please only signup for an SIG if you are willing to contribute (e.g. code).

The signup period will last until September 14th.

After the signup period, any SIG that has at least two people signed up for it will be considered valid. If you are proposing a SIG, we urge you to recruit authors/maintainers of the relevant software -- the authority of what goes in/out of a library remains with the maintainer/author, so their buy-in is crucial. Similarly, we encourage authors/maintainers to signup for SIGs that are relevant to their software.

The follow-up process is also very simple:

1. Each SIG designates a SIG Coordinator. If an SIG cannot agree on a coordinator, one will be chosen for you.
2. The coordinator will organize planning meeting(s) for the SIG. This can be over IRC, video chat, at IROS, or whatever medium bests fits the composition of your SIG. The deadline for these meetings is September 28th.
3. Each SIG group will post their planning notes as a sub-page of http://ros.org/wiki/fuerte/Planning/. The deadline for posting these notes is September 30th. SIGs can have followup meetings, but this initial deadline is to ensure that the SIG is activated.

The plans are just that -- plans. It is up to the members of each SIG to achieve as much of that plan as possible in time for the freeze dates of ROS Fuerte (remember, there's always Groovy Galapagos).

As always, we appreciate your participation. We hope this more distributed process will better match the distributed nature of ROS development.