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Q1: What does FIPA do?
A1: FIPA is a standards organisation that is developing standards for software agents to allow heterogeneous agent systems to interact. View a slideshow presentation for an executive summary of FIPA. and see FIPA’s mission statement for more information.
Q2: How is FIPA organised?
A2: FIPA is comprised from a number of member organisations and companies who collaborate during FIPA meetings to produce standards for interacting heterogeneous agent systems. These member organisations and companies form into Technical Committees and Working Groups during FIPA meetings according to their interests. To support this collaborative environment, FIPA has a Board of Directors who are responsible for managing the business of FIPA, an Architecture Board who are responsible for maintaining the excellence and consistency of FIPA’s technical work, an Image Committee who are responsible for press and advertising and a Secretariat that manages the day-to-day operations of FIPA.
Q3: How do I become a member of FIPA?
A3: Companies and organisations can join FIPA in one of two ways; as a Principal member or as an Associate member. See the instructions for joining for more information.
Q4: How do I contribute to FIPA?
A4: FIPA welcomes contributions regarding existing specifications and work plans from its membership and non-member companies and organisations. See the instructions for contributing for more information.
Q5: How do I attend a FIPA meeting?
A5: FIPA holds three meetings per year, which are normally only open to its membership (see Q3 for information about joining). Non-member companies and organisations can attend FIPA meetings only when contributing (see Q4 for information about contributing). See the instructions for attending for more information.
Q6. How are FIPA specifications organised?
A6: FIPA organises its specifications in a number of ways to allow developers to access the parts of the specifications that they wish to implement. The specification repository contains all of the current FIPA specifications that are available organised according to their specification status, their subject classification and their year of publication at an Experimental or Standard status level.
Q7: What do the specification status levels mean?
A7: FIPA specifications are given a status which defines their position in FIPA’s specification life cycle. A specification begins life as a Preliminary status specification by a Technical Committee when it is working on a draft. When this TC decides that the draft is ready for implementation, it may be advanced to Experimental status and is frozen for a period of two years. After successful implementations and field trials of this specification, it may be advanced to Standard status, which is considered to be a stable and mature specification ratified by FIPA and implemented by organisations and companies. If a specification becomes unnecessary or is supersceded by a nother specifications, then it is Deprecated for a period to six months to allow developers to change their implementations accordingly. After this period, the specification is made Obsolete which means that it is no longer a supported specification of FIPA.
If you have a question about FIPA, its process or its specifications that you would like answered, please send it to the FIPA Image Committee (image@fipa.org).
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