Submitted by “Over the past year or so, Microsoft’s robotics group has been working quietly, very quietly. That’s because, among other things, they were busy planning a significant strategy shift. Microsoft is upping the ante on its robotics ambitions by announcing today that its Robotics Developer Studio, or RDS, a big package of programming and simulation tools, is now available to anyone for free.”
Seems like some lessons remain to be learnt. There are several fully open-sourced and currently used alternative solutions out there. You need to offer at least the same possibilities as the others to penetrate a market… unless I’m mistaken.
Nah, you just need either better marketing or just a larger amount of money spent on lousy marketing
Microsoft has a good offering here. My other favorites are:
http://www.robotc.net/
and
http://www.ros.org/wiki/
I’d be careful using such loaded words in article summaries. Better to say “without charge” or such and reserve free for when its use is unambiguous. MS released the source, but not under an OSI- or FSF-approved license.
Free has multiple meanings. That’s the way language works. It’s not because one of the meanings doesn’t apply that you can’t use the word.
Except that in this case the usage is ambiguous, hence the need to clarify. MS is releasing software in to a market where there are major Free alternatives. To say that it is releasing free software certainly is unclear. Did MS just bow to market pressures and join the movement? If not it would be wise to say so.
I really wish my school would offer a robotics programming class. That seems like something that could be fun and educational at the same time.