Announcing the Open Source Robotics Alliance

Open Robotics (OSRF) is pleased to announce the creation of the Open Source Robotics Alliance (OSRA). The OSRA is a new initiative from the OSRF to ensure the long-term stability and health of our open-source robot software projects.

The OSRF had planned to restructure its operations by broadening community participation and expanding its impact on the larger ROS ecosystem.  The sale of OSRC was the first step towards that vision, and the launch of the OSRA is the next big step towards that change.

To ensure we had the best structure in place come launch time, we spent the last year+ researching and developing the plan, soliciting feedback from community stakeholders, and being deliberate about the process.

Using a mixed membership/meritocratic participation model, the OSRA provides for greater community involvement in decision-making for the projects and in the engineering of the software. This mixed model allows stakeholders of all types to participate in and support the OSRF’s open-source projects in the way that best matches their needs and available resources while still allowing the OSRF to receive the financial support it needs for its projects. The responsibility of managing the following open-source projects has been assigned to the OSRA by the OSRF Board: ROS, Gazebo, Open-RMF, and the infrastructure that supports them.

The OSRA's center of activity will be the Technical Governance Committee (TGC), overseeing the Project Management Committee (PMC) activities. Each PMC is responsible for one project. The TGC and PMCs can also create subcommittees as needed. The TGC answers to the OSRF's Board of Directors, ensuring the Board retains final oversight of the OSRF’s projects and activities.

This structure and the introduction of paid memberships to provide financial support for open-source projects are not new. It is a commonly used model among open-source non-profit organizations such as the OSRF. We are walking a well-trodden path, following in the footsteps of organizations such as The Linux Foundation, the Eclipse Foundation, and the Dronecode Foundation.

We wish to express our gratitude for the early support of our vision of our inaugural members:

• Platinum: Intrinsic, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm Technologies

• Gold: Apex.AI and Zettascale

• Silver: Clearpath Robotics, Ekumen, eProsima, and PickNik

• Associate: Silicon Valley Robotics

• Supporting Organizations: Canonical and Open Navigation

Incoming members as of press time include Bosch and ROS-Industrial, along with others to be announced soon.

The governance transition to the OSRA is in the final stages of preparation. We expect to commence operations on April 15th, 2024. There may be some small disruptions between now and that date as we organize GitHub permissions, calendars, mailing lists, and so on. Once the OSRA commences operations, our four PMCs will take over the day-to-day operations of their respective projects.

We have prepared several documents you can read and reference at your leisure to help you understand the OSRA:

• OSRA explainer

• OSRA FAQ

• Plain English version of the OSRA Charter

You may also find the following formal documents useful.

• OSRA Charter

• Project Charters:

• ROS

• Gazebo

• Open-RMF

• Infrastructure

• Policies and Procedures of the Technical Governance Committee

• FAQs

For this initial year of the OSRA, the OSRF Board has selected people to fill the posts that various bodies would normally elect. The following people have kindly agreed to fill these roles:

• ROS Project Leader: Chris Lalancette

• Gazebo Project Leader: Addisu Taddese

• Open-RMF Project Leader: Michael X. Grey

• Infrastructure Project Leader: Steven! Ragnarok

• TGC Supporting Individual Representative: Steve Macenski

• ROS PMC Supporting Individual Representatives: David Lu!! and Francisco Martin Rico

Additionally, Kat Scott will fill the role of OSRF Developer Advocate assigned to the TGC. We will make further announcements of participation in the next few weeks as we finalize the lists of initial Committers and PMC Members for each project.

We know you will have questions that we could not think of beforehand. We want to answer these questions as best we can, so we have prepared two ways for you to ask your questions and get some answers.

1. We have created a thread in our Discourse forum where you can post questions you want answered. The OSRF team will work to get an answer for each question, and the answer will be posted in the announcement thread.

2. We will be holding a live question-and-answer session at 16:00 PT on March 20, 2024 (23:00 UTC on March 20). The OSRF team will attend this session, which will be moderated by the great Aaron Blasdel. We will post detailed instructions on participation closer to the time.

Finally, if you or your organization is interested in joining the OSRA as a paying member and supporting the future of open source robotics, you can apply right now. For more information, see the section on joining on the OSRA’s website. We look forward to working with our members and all other contributors and users on growing open source robotics on the sound foundation that the OSRA will provide.