Hi Marcus,
ROS has been around for more than 5 years now and we've developed a great user base and it has proven to be a successful platform. There are many things that people like about ROS, but we know that there are many areas for improvement. ROS 2.0 is an abstract name for developing the next generation of ROS. Over the years we have learned many areas where ROS could be improved and there are many tools which exist today that did not exist when ROS was originally created.
It's more of a process of reviewing and improving elements of the ecosystem. The first part of this was our review and overhaul of the build system to enable us to do more powerful things at the library level. We've spent the last several months upgrading the infrastructure to leverage the strengths of the new build system. The next stage we planning to review and develop the communications libraries in ROS.
It's a long process and we're in the very early stages of planning and exploration. One of our biggest steps right now is to develop a process by which we can coordinate the community in productive manner. Our first step will be to gather use cases from the community to be able to derive design requirements. If you or anyone is interested in participating please be on the lookout for more postings on this mailing list.
Tully