All,

We have been using ROS for some time now.  Projects that originally started as research are now maturing to the point where they need to be deployed.  As we have started moving ROS from research applications to real world applications  it is becoming very clear that stability, safety, and reliability are of chief concerns to our customers.  For early adopters, we can alleviate these issues by standing behind the software as a whole, including ROS.  After all, sometimes it is easier to support an open software solution than it is a closed solution, since not all closed source software vendors live up to our customers expectations.

I would like to gauge community interest in creating a group whose purpose is to test, review, and certify robust, stable, and safe  Enterprise versions of ROS.  This may be a group of volunteers, but I fully expect that such a group would need significant funding, hopefully by commercial and other large users.  It is also possible that a company could be create for or step into this role, much like RedHat.

Is anybody open to this idea?  Is this a good idea?  Has anybody else seen/expressed this need?  Is ROS at the point where this makes sense?  What do you think?



Shaun Edwards
Senior Research Engineer
Manufacturing System Department


http://robotics.swri.org
http://rosindustrial.swri.org/
http://ros.swri.org<http://ros.swri.org/>
Southwest Research Institute
210-522-3277