OSR*? Who else here is utterly confused by this OSRF OSRC stuff?

debjit · 2022-12-16T05:09:01.041Z

Can someone be blunt and bullet point the repercussions? Someone who is not a biased rep of OSR*.

All I read is corporate jargon starting with the not-exciting-at-all announcement earlier.

smac · 2022-12-16T05:29:50.964Z

Its probably better to keep this in the same thread as the other discussion but…

Summarily: Think of Open Robotics as a catch-all. OSRF (Foundation) owns the IP of ROS and all the things you might associate with a non-for-profit (logos, trademarks, conference, etc). OSRC (Corporation) did for-profit consulting and contracting of which the artifacts in open-source had their IP transferred to OSRF for long-term stewardship. OSRC is what Intrinsic purchased, not OSRF.

All the ROS “stuff” continues to by owned by OSRF which continues to operate with a skeleton crew, at least for the time being. Nothing changes here. Community/open-source/build farm/ROSCon all the same.
The majority of the Open Robotics staff are part of OSRC which are acquired by Intrinsic
Intrinsic has committed to some relationship with OSRF for funding and the staff from Open Robotics joining them will continue to work on similar, if not exactly the same stuff, for the immediately foreseeable future (though this I’m largely paraphrasing and its best to read the announcements and interviews to get a more nuanced understanding of).
There will be a reorganization of the TSC into <TBD> to lead the development of ROS roadmaps and development, which will likely take the form of other established open-source foundations which will be the driver of new distributed development efforts in concert with existing partners like Intrinsic and TSC member companies with Samsung, Bosch, iRobot, etc which contribute to ROS and the ecosystem.

I found the following links to be helpful in understanding. The Open Robotics team and leadership have lead our community for a decade plus and there’s no reason to think that this is a “bad thing” for ROS, its community, or users. I’ll admit a degree of skepticism and potential risk, but I believe everyone’s heart and heads are in the right place and leaps forward don’t often come fully-derisked.

Alphabet’s Intrinsic Acquires Majority of Open Robotics - IEEE Spectrum
Intrinsic Acquires OSRC and OSRC-SG — Open Robotics
The OSRC Team is Joining Intrinsic and What it Means for the ROS Community

debjit · 2022-12-16T06:34:01.274Z

Thanks for that! Appreciate all the info.

system · 2023-01-15T06:34:20.438Z

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.