Firos maintainer transition request

Hi admins,

we would like to update FIROS to ROS Melodic and also maintain the code on Github. We tried to contact all of the current maintainers but unfortunately their email addresses do not exist.

Currently we are working for an EU-project, so called L4MS (http://l4ms.eu), where we are connecting ROS and FIWARE using your FIROS package. While we were working with it, we have identified few things we would like to improve, like getting rid of the ROS-Definitions which are send at the beginning and the nested Fiware-Entities.

Do you think it would be possible to hand over the development and the maintenance for the ROS-Package and the Git-Repo on Github?

ROS package wiki page : http://wiki.ros.org/firos
Github Repo: https://github.com/Ikergune/firos

Regards

Peter, Dennis and Jonas from Fraunhofer IML, Germany

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That’s great that you’d like to pick it up. It does look like it’s gone unmaintained. Please try some public communications with them such as opening a ticket on the repository.

As per the distributed nature of ROS development there is not centralized control of the code so if you cannot reach the owners or maintainers there’s no one else who can give you access. But since it’s an open source project you can fork it and continue development.

I’ve also tried reached out to them directly to see if I can get a response, and can confirm that all the maintainers emails bounced as undeliverable. I’ve reached out a few other ways but suspect that a response is unlikely.

To that end I’d suggest you go ahead and make your own fork to work on. And if there continues to be no response from the maintainers for a couple weeks you make releases using the same name from your fork.

Hello Tully and Jonas,
My name is Angel, I was the coordinator of that development within the FIWARE project back in 2015.
Unfortunately, I am no longer at Ikergune, the company that developed the original code, but I will do all I can to help you out taking over this project.
Please, allow me a couple days to figure out how we can proceed and I will go back to you.

Thank you for your interest in this project!

@jstenzel, can you send me an email to angel@tupperbot.com, to discuss with you a couple ideas, please?

Thanks!

@tfoote, thank you for your support regarding our request! I will now discuss with Angel how to proceed with the FIROS package. @Angel_Hernandez, I will send you an email to discuss your ideas. Thank you for your answer!

Regards
Jonas

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Hi @tfoote and @Angel_Hernandez, we’ve now completed the first version of our FIROS Node on github:


The new version of Firos doesnt need to publish the ROS defintion as it was before. The nested entities have been removed and divided into smaller, simple key-value pairs (incl. all required information) as it is recommended by Fiware.
The next steps will be dealing with sending and receiving data through the NGSI v2 interfaces. The NGSI v1, which is deprecated in Fiware Orion, will be completely removed.

As the actual FIROS node is used by a bunch of ROS users, I think that it would be good to release the node as a ROS package on the ROS webpage. Do you think it would be possible to release our fork of FIROS ROS node under the same name as the former FIROS package? In my opinion that would be better as releasing it under a different name that might confuse the ROS developers. And it would be bad to have a non-maintained ROS package.

The problem is that Angel and his former colleagues do not have access to the ROS package any more. How can we proceed with this?

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Hi @tfoote and @Angel_Hernandez, we’ve now put more and more effort in our FIROS package as we have released it as a Fiware Generic Enabler and have made further improvements.
I would like to reach out for your support once again in gaining maintenance of the old FIROS ROS package because otherwise this would be a dead package and would confuse and disgust all other ROS users.
Our intention is not to create a second FIROS package concurrent to the existing one. We hope for your support with this.

@jstenzel as I’ve seen it in the various threads there’s no one actively working on the original repository who is able or willing to grant you access. Forks are a natural part of open source development. Since they have discontinued development on that package and you’re continuing to develop it’s pretty clear to users what they should use. The original FIROS package was only released into indigo. I’d suggest that you consider releasing your updated packages into newer ROS distros. You won’t be duplicating any content as it’s not there already. And as they’ve made it clear that they’re not intending to continue maintaining you won’t be stepping on their toes.

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