@mkhansen’s initial post surely was well-intended, but I don’t think @bmagyar talking about burning bridges came “out of the blue”. When members of the ROS2 TSC casually talk about stopping all further ROS1 releases, and OSRF makes no reassuring replies on this matter, I also get the feeling that this is premature, and people are planning to burn some bridges. Please don’t take this as an attack, I am trying to explain the emotions behind some of the reactions here.
My impression is that over the past few months, ROS2 has really started to gain some traction, which of course is great. There has been an influx of new developers from some big-name companies with lots of resources (again, this is great!), and of course they all focus on ROS2 (which is what I would do if I started from scratch today). Most people who are firmly in the ROS2 camp seem to take it as a given that there will be a transition from ROS1 to ROS2, and that this transition will be quick. This makes those of us who have been using ROS for years and have accumulated a large code base understandably uneasy. I don’t believe there will be a quick transition. It will probably be more like the python2/python3 transition, only slower. This sucks, but it’s a result of the decision to change everything all at once in ROS2, instead of the “ship of Theseus” way of transitioning.
I understand that OSRF cannot commit resources to ROS1 forever. But when that day comes, please let’s try to find a successor organization that takes over stewardship of ROS1. There are lots of companies that are built on ROS1. If these companies realize how serious the situation has become, maybe they will cooperate to commit some developer time to the maintenance of ROS1.