Re: OROCOS

I bring this private email from Henrik in the public mailinglist,
because I wanted to write this email to everybody anyway.

On Mon, 15 Jan 2001, Henrik I. Christensen wrote:

> I assume you are tired and overworked:-}
Could be worse :-) OROCOS in itself was an easy proposal (thanks to
everyone!), but I got stuck with three others...

> Did you manage to get the proposal submitted today?
I did! I delivered it personally, in order to be really sure :-)
I didn't receive any reference number yet; the EU will fax me one, and
then I'll let you know.

> Is the version on the web the latest version?
No. I will put the proposal (exactly as I submitted it) on the web.
Summary: three partners (KUL, LAAS, KTH) each with 50000 Euros for two
years; a total travel budget (partners + consortium members) of 30000
Euros (i.e. 4 x 15 people x 500 Euros) + 5000 Euros for computer and
list infrastructure. That's it :-(
I repeat this important information: the three partners are in no way
`special' as far as the content of the OROCOS project goes:
everybody's ideas and suggestions are valid! OROCOS will always remain
completely open, so the three partners are never privileged with
respect to the others :-)

> How do we proceed from here? I have one-two students that are
> interested in doing work on the project asap.
My strategy is as follows: next week (after I will have finished two
other proposals...) I will give the impetus to start real technical
discussions through the mailing list, grouped under headings that more
or less coincide with the Work Packages of the IST OROCOS proposal.  I
certainly don't want to wait till the EU approves things :-) And,
moreover, nobody has to wait for me before starting discussions on
this mailing list! (I am not (and don't want to be) the dictator of
what is relevant or important for OROCOS: we all are!

But allow me the freedom to post a suggestion: the first couple of
weeks (months?) I would like to focus the discussion on _design_: what
are the big goals we want to achieve? What are relevant structures we
need to achieve this goal? What are the trade-offs? How do we cope
with the enormous flexibility that we want to have in OROCOS? (I.e.,
OROCOS should eventually be able to ``do it all'' :-) ) Etc.

I have a couple of people working on OROCOS subjects already; I
want them to put their designs and code on the OROCOS side as quickly
as possible, so that they can get feedback from the community, and the
community gets something to talk about. Right now, they are still a bit
afraid of what others might think of their efforts :-)

So, let's start ! One thing we could do immediately is to collect links to
web pages where people have already material that lies in OROCOS'
scope; I will collect all these links and make a separate web page
under the OROCOS umbrella. So, please let me know which material you
have that can be put under everyone's devastating critics right now :-)
Design documents are especially wanted in this early stage of the
project.

As soon as the need for a CVS repository arises, I will put one on
line (we have this infrastructure already installed for other
purposes, so this won't be a big effort for us at all).

Herman
-- 
[email protected]
Linux job: <http://www.mech.kuleuven.ac.be/~bruyninc/jobs.html>