Where’s the place of academia in the governance structure? It doesn’t seem very probable that any academia would pay the high membership fees. However, academia has long been a core part of ROS, sometimes even giving back important functionalities of ROS. But without a representation, who will make sure academia’s interests are being incorporated?
How to approach academic institutions in convincing them to become OSRA members or at least supporting orgs? You probably know their budgets are limited and compartmentalized a lot. What should I say to my head of department/dean to convince him/her to support OSRA?
Academia’s interests are represented in the TGC by the Associate representative (see Article 4.6 in the OSRA Charter). This person coordinates with all Associate members, who include non-profit organizations, government agencies, and academic institutions, and brings their opinions and concerns to the TGC.
We specifically created the Associate membership level to address the limitations of academic and non-profit organization budgets.
Academia is indeed a crucial component of the ROS community. We have identified that starting in-depth learning of ROS at colleges and universities, and even at lower educational levels, is crucial to producing knowledgeable roboticists. In addition, we know that many excellent ROS-based projects are started in educational institutions. We also know that ROS education and continuity in maintaining ROS projects in the academic field have challenges. We would like to work with the academic community to address these and their other concerns, which is why we encourage both academic institutions and individuals to join the OSRA.
For concrete technical contributions, academic institutions participate in the same way and on the same level as everyone else: by making contributions to the projects through pull requests, and potentially becoming Committers and PMC Members. Organizational membership in the OSRA is not required to contribute.
Separately, we also plan to improve OSRF programs related to ROS education and academia. As you may or may not know, Sabine Hauert is a member of the OSRF Board, and we greatly benefit from Sabine’s academic experience, insight, and guidance.