For reference, from our internal staffing plans I estimate that preparing and releasing a ROS 1 distro requires 8-9 person-months of effort from our team.
Since leaving Willow Garage in 2012, we’ve received approximately $0 directed at maintenance or improvement of ROS 1.
So for each future release of ROS1, how much $ would you want to make more releases? Just enough for 8/9 person-months every year? Can it be raised via kickstarter?
If the problem is having developers, what other options exist? Does the releaser have to be in the bay area? Can it be a freelancer / outside organisation similar to what I guess is still happening with ROS answers?
time that we spend on ROS 1 is time that that we’re not spending on ROS 2, thereby (further) delaying the development of the latter. And the risk in that delay is also real: at some point organizations that eagerly want ROS 2 because ROS 1 doesn’t meet their needs will decide to stop waiting and instead build or buy something else, likely a proprietary solution.
Let’s check this risk. We assume there is a company X that will wait for ROS2 if no more ROS1 releases are done (8-9 person-months gained every year), but not wait if ROS1 continues to have releases. So company X has at least 3 options:
A: continue waiting for ROS2
B: build or buy something else
C: Provide a dev-seat equivalent of 8-9 person-months every 2 years
It seems to me that both A and C will always remain more economically viable than B. So how realistic is scenario B as a risk, really, if the crucial difference can be made by just dropping ROS1 releases?