ROS News for the Week of April 14th, 2025

[facontidavide]

@smac good points and I agree with you.

I think that most of the people have genuinely good intentions… even those that were banned from this forum and decided to create a fake account to continue complaining (?)

But “good intentions” don’t make you right, as being “loud” doesn’t make other people listening to you.

For me ROS is not just a robotic middleware, but also a community or people. We need to decide if that community is a toxic one or a welcoming one.

The Quartely Foundation Townhall seems like a good idea

[moriarty]

This thread has gotten pretty toxic.

So before it gets closed…

Thanks @Katherine_Scott & everyone who’s at Intrinsic working on ROS, Gazebo & OpenRMF.

Thanks @gbiggs for dealing with the community.

Thanks @facontidavide for all the open source work on BTrees, PlotJuggler etc.

Thanks @smac for Nav 2 work @gavanderhoorn for the work on ROS-I

And @DLu for your work on Nav 1 & the meme that kicked off this conversation…

I’ll try to keep my bias out of this, and note this is my option, and not that of any current or former employers.

But the original meme was calling out a group, inappropriately, and was flagged.

The edited meme still mentioned a specific product. And was again flagged.

Obviously it’s struck a nerve in the community. The endless memes reminding everyone ROS 1 is coming to an end, showing it in the bottom of the pool…

I’ve used ROS for 14 years, and have been in some way preparing for, or dealing with ROS 2 migrations for almost 7 years, since Bouncy… it’s painful. Much more painful than the wet-dry rosbuild to catkin transition.

But really ROS users can’t expect Willow Garage, Open Robotics and now Intrinsic employees to do majority of the work.

Why is the migration painful?

Because it takes time, and it’s often hard to prioritize. And it gets harder the longer you put it off.

Most of us have been the parent in the pool dealing with some product launch or critical issue, and often under employer contracts that make getting contributions upstream difficult… or working around some upstream bug with a quick fix that’s not easy to generalize and contribute back… and that so many companies built on top of ROS have internally been reinventing wheels.

The reality is just exposing the classic xkcd comic:

[facontidavide]

@moriarty

Saying “thank you” so much, you made J.D. Vance proud

[david_is_damn_right]

I flagged the post as it targets an individual as per current practices.

But this is a good one in my opinion. I wish our community guidelines would allow it.

If this is censored, I would defend Davide’s right of speech, of course.

[alainsanguinetti]

A few years ago I had proposed to make a last ROS 1 version, and turn it into a “rolling release”, I think it could still be done

ROS1 Obvious Orlitia - let's make it happen?

Hello there, I’m suggesting the creation of a new release for ROS1 after noetic. I’m even suggesting the name “Obvious Owl Orlitia”. I think that a good release ambition would be: 100% API compatibility with noetic design to be “rolling release” from now on since it is community effort and without EOL refactor on the core components to facilitate future changes without breaking ABI (for example use of d-pointer like in KDE or Qt), this supports the previous goal deliver as many pending impro…

And I think I still have a PR waiting to be merged on ROS 1 --’

If the foundation has $4 mil waiting, I think it’d be a good use of some of that money to open an office somewhere in Europe, get some European public funding (double whatever money you put in basically), hire some engineers at European rates, and work swiftly on fixing whatever is blocking people from switching to ROS 2. Many countries would be happy to welcome you I’m sure! I’d pick Wroclaw in Poland imho.

[david_is_damn_right]

I have no idea why they do not hire or make another plan to address the mountainous pile of problems. Amazingly, there is simply no attempt. Not a single attempt. It is a dead horse.

Then I think some people who worked at OSRF do not want an independent Foundation from them. Not all, but some, do not want to lose their privileges, whatever they are. Some could have stayed with the Foundation if they wanted to do community work, but they chose a Google office and left no one in particular as their clerk in the Foundation. I see that Foundation’s salaries are as good as Google’s, especially much better regarding the amount of work done. Of course, they want it to continue until it bursts.

Yes, a European extension would be nice. Poland is a great suggestion. But I am not sure they could handle strong Eastern European humor with this level of ego fragility.

[facontidavide]

@david_is_damn_right

I say it because I don’t use ROS at all.

Seriously, what are you even doing here, Doganu… I mean, @david_is_damn_right ?

This is my last post in this thread, where I am going to say that I stand corrected.

People supporting OSRA with money are the only ones that have the right to know how that money is used, not people like me or anyone else that feels entitled to know how others should do their job.

(Even if it would be … “nice”, to make that information public. I leave it here)

And that mechanism is already in place.

[david_is_damn_right]

I would expect that you could see it, Davide. It’s obviously obvious.

I want to do open-source robotics.

And open-source is done by passionate people. Not with sluggish and lethargic ego-fragile individuals. Not with those who remember students only when testing is needed. Not with those who prefer townhalls. Open source is no longer for them. Open source is for the young; it’s for mavericks. It’s for those who want to go to uncharted territories…

Students, passionate roboticists, ROS1 fans, and all young turks.

Drop me a message to work on open-source robotics!

[Toushif_Ahammad]

Hey there ! I am a student and would like to know more about this opportunity.

[devvaibhav]

I am interested and would love to know more.

[scastro]

Open source is for people who want to work with others and build up a community, even if it slows things down.

Being a “maverick” who cranks out thousands of lines of code and alienates others, in my experience, is not really how things get done outside of simple personal projects.

You may not want to follow someone who has a track record of having to make alternative accounts due to (presumably) an inability to get along with the community.

If you don’t like something in open source, either fix it, support someone else who can fix it, or build something better.

[david_is_damn_right]

I do not call for followers.

My call is for independent minds who do not follow so-called authorities or experts blindly. My call is for new leaders in robotics who can tell me or anyone else that they are wrong when they are wrong. My call is for people who have an inner motivation and curiosity to find out more and more. This is called passion. So I don’t know why you immediately equated being mavericks with 10x coders. I am not a 10x coder.

For the rest, I can write long, but instead I will suggest a speech by Claude Shannon from 1952.

Claude Shannon’s “Creative Thinking” Speech: A Genius Reveals How To Be Creative

These are people we need to read more carefully. Again and again.

(My previous reading suggestion was flagged. I hope this can stay without being banned.)