Just to give some visibility into some of the work bubbling away these days:
Cairo renderer: Bulia has taken point on investigation of conversion to Cairo. Some tough problems have been uncovered but we're gaining a clearer picture of what needs done. Presently this looks like it will require an all at once brute force approach, rather than incremental refactoring. If so, we'll need to reach a decision on how to undertake that while minimizing disruption to SVN HEAD users.
Build system: There is definitely a concensus that our current build system sucks. Options include CMAKE, Bob's buildtool, or just a cleaned up automake. We really need to have interested parties mind meld and find a single solution.
Version control system: Mental has been experimenting with git and trying to get it to operate with svn. This study is still very early on, but if it works out well, one day we may begin encouraging developers to use git.
Bug tracking: I have been experimenting with use of Mantis with the goal of replacing our SF bug tracker. It looks good, but the principle issue is how to migrate the bugs and their history from SF to Mantis. I'm also interested in seeing if it can be combined well with Drupal, maybe along with Pootle. Any drupalheads out there?
Manual: We've got a good unofficial non-free manual/book and several [semi-]official incomplete free manuals. There is discussion about if efforts can be combined to produce a good official free manual.
Anyway, I've probably missed something, but I think that covers the pending changes that are percolating. Most of these would benefit from discussion, so we can make sure there is a rough concensus favoring the change - so if you have concerns about any of these changes, now's a good chance to bring 'em up.
Bryce