[ros-users] ROS 2.0 Strategy review

Linas Vepstas linasvepstas at gmail.com
Sat Sep 26 17:08:06 UTC 2015


Hi Aaron,

Can you clarify? Do you mean "IP of DDS", or IP of something else?  Are DDS
algos patented?  There used to be talk of zero-mq-based ROS, but that seems
to have disappeared from the table.

My knee-jerk reaction is to be a bit suspicious of OMG-created
technologies; they sound great at first, but are often over-wrought (e.g.
corba).  I'd never even heard a whisper about DDS before yesterday; I'm
nervous about adopting a technology that has not yet gained any acceptance
at all in the open-source community.  So, for example, whatever one's
opinion of zmq might be, positive or negative, its a "known thing"; many
people have used it, there is developer experience, a track record.
There's no such track record for DDS -- the proprietary world seems to be
the primary consumer of the thing, and their experience with it is secret,
and not shared. We don't actually know how well it works (although I admit
it sounds really great, based on the wikipedia article).

Anyway: please clarify: IP of what? And who "owns" that IP, who has rights
to it?

-- Linas.

On Sat, Sep 26, 2015 at 11:03 AM, Aaron Schiffman via ros-users <
ros-users at lists.ros.org> wrote:

> This doesn't feel right sharing my some of my thoughts I held back since
> Roscon 2014 about ROS 2.0, but here goes:
> The ip ownership and patent of the underlying ROS 2.0 distributed udp
> protocol are of concern as a third party protocol implementor. Yes, ROS.org
> or OSRF may have explicit legal permission to use said protocol, but it is
> not truly an open/free platform when the public is at the mercy of the IP
> owner, unless the entire platform is contractually opened up and made free.
>
> As a ROS protocol implementor Ive personally held off on implementing ROS
> 2.0 protocols, while waiting to see how it pans out. I am still of the
> belief that the UDPROS protocol with enhancements can do everything the new
> protocol can do, but better. That really doesn't matter now though.
>
> I appreciate that osrf took the focus from protocols and put their limited
> resources to work on tools. In an r&d organization that would be the path I
> would expect to be the most rewarding, except that I've grown to appreciate
> think of ROS as a rock that the open robotics universe revolves around.
> Like I think of Linux, as an open operating system, except that ROS is more
> an open set of design frameworks like tcpip is a standard protocol with
> many implementors.
>
> Wish I could be there in Hamburg with you all! The birds of a feather
> meetings, and the couple hours socializing with drinks were the most
> influential on my development direction this past year. Watching roscon on
> YouTube just will not be the same.
>
> I am so stoked about this upcoming year in Robotics I can hardly contain
> myself (probably a good reason for me to not be there in October:)
>
> God bless Roscon 2015 in Hamburg!
>
> Aaron
>
> Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android
> <https://overview.mail.yahoo.com/mobile/?.src=Android>
>
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