New Build Farm Backer Program & Infra Team Swag
For most ROS and Gazebo developers, the ability to simply `sudo apt install` a package rather than compiling it from source is a daily convenience we often take for granted. This seamless experience is powered entirely by the OSRF Build Farm—a massive, complex infrastructure operating behind the scenes to build, test, and distribute millions of packages to roboticists worldwide. However, serving over half a billion packages a year makes this digital utility one of our largest operational expenses. We are now pulling back the curtain on our infrastructure and launching the Build Farm Backer campaign to help fund the servers and the incredible team that keep the open source robotics ecosystem secure, stable, and accessible for everyone. We could really use your support and the support of your employer!
What is the Build Farm?
If you have ever downloaded a binary ROS package from apt, you’ve been the recipient of an artifact produced by the OSRF’s Build Farm. If you’ve ever run `sudo apt update` and had your ROS packages magically update to the latest version, you’ve also benefited from the OSRF Build Farm. The Build Farm is the OSRF’s GIANT Jenkins instance that takes open source ROS and Gazebo packages, builds them from source, tests them, and then delivers them to a variety of servers where they can be downloaded. To our knowledge, the ROS Build Farm is one of the largest public Jenkins instances in the world, and it takes a staff of multiple build farmers like Clara, Jorge, and Cristobal, and a number of AWS instances, just to keep things up to date and running. Our Build Farmers and infra team also handle really important jobs for the Open Robotics community like the development of core tooling, keeping our documentation and index websites up and running, responding to incidents, and maintaining all of the websites under our domains.
To give you an idea of just how big the OSRF Build Farm is, here are a few stats:
We Need Your Help!
To help cover our costs and keep the Build Farm running, we are asking for support from the Open Robotics community. We’ve put together a Build Farm Backer donation campaign to directly fund our Build Farm and our Build Farmers. We’re asking Build Farm users and their employers to donate this holiday season to help keep our open source community secure and sustainable. If you have ever saved time by downloading a ROS or Gazebo binary package instead of compiling it from source, we would love your support. The money raised by this campaign goes directly to the OSRF, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and is tax-deductible in the US. When talking to your employer about donating, make sure to mention that the binary packages produced by our Build Farm not only save you compilation time but also help keep your systems secure and up to date! Also, please help us spread the word! We take privacy seriously, and we don’t track our users, which makes it difficult for us to reach our users when we need help.
Infra Team Swag
In exciting news for our community, and as a key component of our ongoing Build Farm Backer campaign, we are thrilled to announce the launch of our first-ever collection of official OSRF Infrastructure Team merchandise. This exclusive swag line is designed to recognize and celebrate the vital contributions of our Infra Team members and also allow all supporters to publicly display their commitment to the Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF) mission.
Whether you are an active contributor to the OSRF Infra Team or simply someone who believes in the power of open-source robotics and wishes to offer your support, you can now purchase a variety of high-quality items. The collection includes Infra Team branded t-shirts, cozy hoodies, mugs, versatile bags, and eye-catching posters. These items are available now in our brand-new FourthWall shop.
Every single purchase directly supports the OSRF. All proceeds generated from the sales of this exclusive Infra Team merchandise will be channeled directly into the foundation, helping to fund critical infrastructure maintenance, development efforts, and the continuation of our non-profit mission to support the development and adoption of open-source software for robotics.