OSRA TGC meeting minutes for January, 2025

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The meeting minutes for the regular meeting of the Technical Governance Committee held on the 23rd of January, 2025, were approved in the February meeting and are now available in the official minutes repository. You can find the complete minutes here, as well as a Markdown version below. The Markdown version is experimental so please excuse any formatting problems and errors; the PDF version is the official version.

The next TGC meeting will take place in March, 2025. The minutes of the February meeting should be approved in that meeting and posted publicly shortly thereafter.

TECHNICAL GOVERNANCE COMMITTEE

MEETING MINUTES

23 JAN 2025 / 22:00-23:30 UTC / VIRTUAL VIA ZOOM

ATTENDEES

OSRF:

  • Geoff Biggs (TGC Chair)
  • Kat Scott (Developer Advocate)
  • Vanessa Yamzon Orsi (Secretary)
  • Vicky Brasseur (OSRA Governance Advisor)

OSRA Delegates

  • Addisu Taddese (Gazebo)
  • Chris Lalancette (ROS)
  • David Lu!! (Individual Rep)
  • Hemal Shah (Platinum Rep, NVIDIA)
  • Jason Higgins (Silver rep, Clearpath)
  • Michael Grey (Open-RMF)
  • Michel Hidalgo (Silver Rep, Ekumen)
  • Steve Peters (Gazebo)
  • Steven! Ragnarok (Infrastructure)
  • Tully Foote (Platinum Rep, Intrinsic)
  • Yadunund Vijay (Open-RMF)

OSRA Observers

  • Carmelo Di Franco (Aitronik)
  • Christian Henkel (Bosch)
  • Daniel Gordon (Huawei)
  • Denis Stogl (Stogl Robotics)
  • Gordon Grigor (NVIDIA)
  • Maria Vergo (ROS-I)
  • Michael Carroll (Intrinsic)
  • Nick Hehr (Viam)
  • Ryan Gariepy (OSRF Board Chair)
  • Tom Panzarella (Seegrid)
  • Todd Sutton (Zachry)

AGENDA

Geoff Biggs, TGC Chair, called the meeting to order at 15:04 on 23 Jan 2025 UTC

Existing Business

  1. Confirmation of minutes of meeting TGC-20241219-Regular
    • Approved by consensus
  2. Project reports
    • Project update: ROS
      • Presented by Chris Lalancette, PMC Lead
        • Chris Lalancette stepping down as Project Lead, but will help ensure and be available for a smooth transition to the new Project Leader.
        • New committer admitted: Janus from Cellumation.
        • Kilted timeline has been updated; seven (7) weeks from freeze to releasing the software as stable. Input requested on timeline.
        • RMW Zenoh is close to achieving Tier 1 level. There is one persistent failing test; working through that with Zettascale. Also working on security and infrastructure testing.
        • Windows on Conda - we are heavily considering dropping the Windows debug jobs entirely. Will be discussed further by the ROS PMC and will then check with the community. The most recent survey indicates minimal use.
    • Project update: Gazebo
      • Presented by Addisu Taddese, PMC Lead
        • Citadel is now officially EOL.
        • Gazebo Classic EOL at the end of this month. PMC has been working on comms to the community, including banners and directions to migration guide to new Gazebo.
        • All Zenoh and ROS Gz transport integration are underway. Discussions with ROS PMC to look into RMW Zenoh’s graph cache implementation.
        • New feature on auto inertia calculation in SDF can now take into account the mass specified, instead of only densities.
        • Started QT5 to AT6 migration. Work began in Ionic and is being picked up again for Jetty.
        • Conda on Windows work is very close. Gz rendering package is now green on Windows on Ogre 2.
    • Project update: Open-RMF
      • Presented by Michael Grey, PMC Lead
        • Scenaris on site editor feature has landed. A 3D tool that allows layout of facility, including parent-child relationships.
        • Initial version of workflow serialization, to be able to save the workflow into a Json file, parse from there and generate a workflow at runtime.
        • Migration of the free fleet package from Eclipse DDS to Zenoh is complete. ROS 1 and 2 are now using Zenoh to communicate across multiple robots. PR open for bridge to get better support for namespaces in Zenoh for ROS. Brought the code base from 25K to only 5K lines of code.
    • Project update: Infrastructure
      • Presented by Steven! Ragnarok, PMC Lead
        • Headline for the near future will be the 24.0.4 migration. The ROS infrastructure is run on Ubuntu 20.0.4. We target every other LTS so we are now transitioning to 24.0.4. The transition has been made for ci.ros2.org, the Jenkins build farm used by the ROS core team. Cutover was completed on the MLK Jr holiday in the US to minimize downtime.
        • Established internal deadline for completing migration on build.ros2.org in order to avoid conflict with the Kilted release. The goal is to have the migration completed by the middle of March.
  3. Existing Business
    • Status of SIGs/TCs
      • Technical Committee on Enhancement Proposal Processes
        • Goal: Upgrade and improvements over REP
        • Chair: Geoff Biggs
        • Members: PMC Leads
        • Update: Draft of scope and process is in progress, aiming to circulate to the TGC for review in the March 2025 meeting.
      • SIG on Interoperability
        • Chair: Michael Grey
        • This month’s meeting was skipped due to the holiday season timing.

New Business

  • Introduction of new TGC members

    • David Lu!! - Supporting Individual Representative
    • Steve Peters - additional Gazebo PMC representative
    • Yadunund Vijay - additional Open-RMF PMC rep
    • Note: Additional ROS and Infrastructure PMC rep elections are underway

  • Adoption of proposed project charter and official adoption of ros2_control as a formal project under the OSRA.

    • Discussion items:

      • Clarification requested on meeting requirements stated in the charter and addition of explanation for the mechanism for any needed modifications.
      • Questions from the TGC on project aims and processes, PMC makeup, committers, and contributors, interactions/ collaborations with the other OSRA projects.
      • Rationale for adding ros2_control as a project to the OSRA.
      • Proposed renaming from ros2_control to ros-controls to denote coverage of the project beyond ROS 2 only.

    • Motion approved by consensus.

  • Appointment of interim ROS PMC Project Leader

    • Michael Carroll has been nominated to be the ROS PMC Project Leader as a result of Chris Lalancette stepping down from the role.
    • Motion approved by consensus.

  • Discussion of PMC Project Lead Role

    • Open discussion on roles and responsibilities, and potential points for improvement or distribution of roles across multiple people to accommodate that under the OSRA most filling the roles will be doing so on a volunteer basis.
    • Separation of core development from project management responsibilities.
    • Improving processes for cross-training, succession planning and general coverage for temporary or longer-term absences.
    • Clarifying the focus of the OSRA projects - definition, audience, stakeholders, and priorities in order to better manage community expectations and goals.
    • Proposal: form a Technical Committee to resolve the above.

  • Draft IP Policy

    • A first edition has been drafted and will be circulated for review and comments.
    • Overview presented by Vicky Brasseur, OSRA Governance Advisor.
    • Discussion on approach, licenses, OSI considerations, community packages

Other Items

  • OSRF management and the TGC relayed appreciation to Chris Lalancette for his many years of service to ROS, and wished him the best in his future endeavors.

Adjournment - Geoff Biggs adjourned the meeting at 16:15 UTC.

ACTION ITEMS

  1. The minutes of this meeting will be circulated to the TGC for review and approval before the next TGC meeting.
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