> Thats the part of @gerkeys anwer that reassured me the most: that all of your technology (in the military context) remains open source, and that youre judging each potential project on a moral basis.
You'll notice that @gerkey did not specify what moral basis is being applied. @gerkey spend a lot of words to explain that taking funds from the DOD is morally ok (or not), which was however not the topic.
The actual problem arises when OSRF actively supports ROS-Military. ROS MIlitary has the goal of improving technology that helps killing for political goals, and in particular do so for the US government. Due to that, it is political, it takes sides in global conflicts. It's not immoral for ROS-Military to exist, it is very transparent about it's goals, including the political aspects. Read the ROSCon program: "The United States military..." Could not be more transparent.
But it is impossible to offer any support to ROS-Military without being political. OSRF can take all the money the DOD wishes to throw at it, OSRF can tolerate the existence of ROS-Military, but it should in no case directly support ROS.Military, and from the ROSCon program it seems that it crossed this line, and nothing in @gerkey s response even denied that.
So any organisation in this world which thinks about sponsoring OSRF one way or the other now has to consider that OSRF helps ROS Military, and thus helps military operations inside and outside the US that protect the American petrol-fuelled way of life.
This is different from taking DOD money or supporting civilian DOD funded projects (setting aside the arguments by Ben Kuipers for the sake of the argument).
ROS-Military is not politically neutral, and it is not civilian. People will die thanks to ROS Military. People will die for political goals of the US. That's all fair enough to participate in for any individual at their discretion, but not for OSRF, IMHO.
---
[Visit Topic](
https://discourse.ros.org/t/roscon-2018-program-published/5537/8) or reply to this email to respond.
If you do not want to receive messages from ros-users please use the unsubscribe link below. If you use the one above, you will stop all of ros-users from receiving updates.
______________________________________________________________________________
ros-users mailing list
ros-users@lists.ros.org
http://lists.ros.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-users
Unsubscribe: <
http://lists.ros.org/mailman//options/ros-users>
(text/plain)