[ros-users] ROS usability (was: ROS & DDS)

Thibault Kruse kruset at in.tum.de
Wed Feb 19 21:58:38 UTC 2014


Hello Daniel,

> To be honest, I'd rather see William work on crazy issues like middleware
> debate than consuming inordinate amounts of oxygen and pizza in order to
> writing catkin_create scripts - that's where the average grad student or
> company engineer can help out with a bit of guidance.

I believe other than keeping the buildfarm up, OSRF ROS resources should
focus on either finding industry funds for OSRF, or growing the community
passion for ROS. Ease of use for beginners seems like an important factor
in the success of ROS so far, so investing in that seems like a reasonable
course to take.

> There is another point I'd like to bring up about usability. To me
>
> *usability* != *ease of use for beginners*.

I like to consider whether *ease of use for beginners* is relevant to ROS
today or not, regardless of whether you want to call that "usability" or
not. Establishing a healthy growth of new contributors to fill in the gaps
where maintainers left is important. Those new contributors do not
materialize out of thin air, they all start as ROS beginners. And that's
where new people either get hooked, or where they turn away.

regards,
  Thibault



More information about the ros-users mailing list