Hi Brice,

I believe you are correct in that base movement control has been
reinvented several times over in ROS.  We wrote our own a while back,
but there are probably other quality movement controllers across the
ROS space:

 http://www.ros.org/wiki/teleop_twist_keyboard

teleop_twist_keyboard was based on the old playerjoy utility from
Player, which includes a stop command and has limited handling of key
press/release events.  We often use teleop_twist_keyboard for the
Create, AR.Drone, and PR2 (as in the following video):

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-9sDNnGtIs

I think your post is great reminder that the ROS community could
benefit from a clearer organization of packages, messages, and
functionality in ROS.  Such a clear organization does not seem likely
to happen organically without some guidance from the ROS leadership.

-Chad