It came as a surprise to some, and as good news to others.
I quit my job.
You can't ignore the raise in contributions and active developers the past
year. On the other hand, we saw these same people hitting (and sometimes
fixing) the same issues over and over again. So I got asking around if
someone felt like sponsoring my Orocos development time such that we could
fix Orocos for the better. PAL Robotics (http://www.pal-robotics.com)
answered positively and proposed to sponsor the project towards its
RTT-2.0 release. As the mailing list showed conveniently today, we haven't
cleared out some of the core issues facing us, but let it be clear that
sooner than later, the cut will be made.
I started a small company, The SourceWorks - "Open Source in Control",
which aims to promote, teach and develop open source in robotics and
machine control. You could hardly call this a spin-off, it's mainly a
means to organise myself for the near future. Although I got pretty booked
for the remainder of 2009, the idea is to find a means for continuation of
this path in the coming years. It's unclear yet how. Maybe by providing
consulting or training or providing some hardware, I don't know. I don't
aim for selling some of the Orocos components as closed/commercial
software, or a 'professional' vs 'community' edition. I'm not *that*
perverted[1].
Rest to say that this step is entirely driven by my passion for open
source robotics, and not caused by malaise at my former employer. I'll
keep in close and friendly contact with FMTC, even more so because they
are important Orocos users and contributors.
That's about all there is to say until now, you'll get more details when
the full announcement is made and the actual work starts.
If you want to contact me, mail me (peter) at thesourceworks.com, my FMTC
email address will vanish by the end of this week.
Peter
[1] I am however open minded enough to take jobs which require respecting
intellectual property and company secrets, also if they involve developing
closed Orocos components for said company. The Orocos licenses and
copyrights must be respected equally as well of course.
A new road ahead
I would like to add few words to the announcement of Peter, since I
represent the sponsor company Pal Technology.
As he said, there is no plan to make RTT commercial.
Pal Technology will never force in any way the roadmap of RTT 2.0 to
its specific needs. The sponsor will never claim any right over the
RTT or Orocos project.
Even if you have noticed that I have been recently quite active on the
list, my only purpose was to stimulate the communication in the
developers community.
Sometimes it is good to take some "fresh ideas" from some outsider...
some of these ideas will be trashed but something else might be useful
to "think out if the box".
The suggestions given by people of Pal Technology will have for Peter
the same importance than suggestions coming from any other developer.
We don't expect/want Peter's decision to be biased by our contribution.
I hope we will gain more respect from the community for our
contribution in the source code development rather that for our money.
Pal Technology will sponsor the development of RTT 2.0 because we
believe that the project deserve to be used more broadly in the
community of robotics.
Just one last word: I think that ALL the people who want to contribute
to RTT (and Orocos in general), should spend some time in the next
week on this forum, or present their ideas and suggestion in a more
"tidy" way on the wiki section.
Discussion should not be about changing the philosophy of RTT: it is
about finding its potential weaknesses and limitations, and fix it.
Davide
A new road ahead
On Wed, 29 Apr 2009, Davide Faconti wrote:
> I would like to add few words to the announcement of Peter, since I
> represent the sponsor company Pal Technology.
>
> As he said, there is no plan to make RTT commercial.
> Pal Technology will never force in any way the roadmap of RTT 2.0 to
> its specific needs. The sponsor will never claim any right over the
> RTT or Orocos project.
Don't forget that you _do_ have the copyrights on the code that is
contributed via Peter's sponsored work :-)
> Even if you have noticed that I have been recently quite active on the
> list, my only purpose was to stimulate the communication in the
> developers community.
> Sometimes it is good to take some "fresh ideas" from some outsider...
> some of these ideas will be trashed but something else might be useful
> to "think out if the box".
> The suggestions given by people of Pal Technology will have for Peter
> the same importance than suggestions coming from any other developer.
> We don't expect/want Peter's decision to be biased by our contribution.
> I hope we will gain more respect from the community for our
> contribution in the source code development rather that for our money.
> Pal Technology will sponsor the development of RTT 2.0 because we
> believe that the project deserve to be used more broadly in the
> community of robotics.
Thanks for this confidence!
> Just one last word: I think that ALL the people who want to contribute
> to RTT (and Orocos in general), should spend some time in the next
> week on this forum, or present their ideas and suggestion in a more
> "tidy" way on the wiki section.
> Discussion should not be about changing the philosophy of RTT: it is
> about finding its potential weaknesses and limitations, and fix it.
I fully agree!
Herman