The Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF) this week announced the launch of the similarly named Open Source Robotics Alliance (OSRA).
The new initiative is designed to maintain development for and maintenance of open source robotics projects, with a particular focus on the OSRF’s own robot operating system (ROS).
First released in 2007 by erstwhile Bay Area incubator Willow Garage, ROS has played a foundational role in robotics development for decades.
In a show of support, Nvidia and Qualcomm have both signed on as “Platinum” members for the new alliance, along with Alphabet’s X spinout Intrinsic.
Former Open Robotics CEO Brian Gerkey (who current serves as Intrinsic’s CTO) has been appointed to the OSRA’s board of directors.
Elon Musk’s xAI released its Grok large language model as “open source” over the weekend.
But does releasing the code for something like Grok actually contribute to the AI development community?
This isn’t the first time the terms “open” and “open source” have been questioned or abused in the AI world.
So where does xAI’s Grok release fall on this spectrum?
Is his nascent AI company really dedicated to open source development?
“The trajectory of privacy and data protection is at a critical juncture, and it is imperative that all stakeholders, including tech giants like yours, uphold their responsibilities to safeguard these rights.
One of the signatories, Pirate Party MEP Patrick Breyer, summarizes Meta’s demand for a “privacy fee” as “economic coercion”.
noyb has subsequently filed another GDPR complaint against Meta’s model, focused on how easy/not is it for people to withdraw consent.
There are also a series of consumer protection complaints in the mix — which argue Meta’s approach breaches EU consumer protection rules.
Completing the circle, consumer right groups have filed as series of GDPR complaints against Meta’s ‘pay or okay’ model, too.
Lago, developer of an open-source billing platform, has picked up the funding across two rounds of funding it’s revealing to coincide with its official launch.
The Lago doing business today as a billing platform got its start in a very classical startup way: it had no idea that it would be a billing platform.
There are even a number of providers already pursuing an open-source approach, including FossBilling, ChargeBee, Kill Bill, AppDirect’s jBilling and the imaginatively named “Open Source Billing.” (Why beat around the bush?)
So it’s an it’s still an unsolved problem.” In Lago’s view, offering open source tools is that best solution to meet a variety of needs and ideas.
For some of those users, the open source ethos also lines up with what they are hoping to espouse themselves as businesses.
The company’s vision for moderation is a stackable ecosystem of services, which is why it will start allowing users to install filters from independent moderation services on top of what Bluesky already requires.
For example, someone could create a moderation service that blocks images of spiders on the network.
Bluesky says installing filters from independent moderation services will be as easy as following another account.
People running moderation services will be able to set custom labels and determine what they do.
Moderation services aren’t tied to individual accounts, so multiple people can manage them together.
Readyverse Studios partnered with Warner Bros.
Readyverse Studios founders debuted Open in a trailer today during the South By Southwest (SXSW) festival.
Of course, the new experience features a Ready Player One biome where players can explore environments, get skins inspired by the novel, and compete against each other.
In the trailer, viewers see Ready Player One protagonist Wade Watts (a.k.a.
For those who aren’t familiar with Cline’s work, Ready Player One is set in 2045, when the planet is on the verge of collapse.
TechCrunch is on the hunt for 200 early-stage founders to feature in the Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco this October.
Back in 2022, the Startup Battlefield expanded to include a showcase of the top 200 companies from across the globe.
Apply NowShowcasing global foundersFrom the Startup Battlefield 200, we will select 20 companies for the Startup Battlefield competition.
The only way early-stage startups can exhibit on the show floor at Disrupt is through Startup Battlefield, and the only way to be a Startup Battlefield Finalist is to be selected for Startup Battlefield 200.
How to become a part of TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 200The process is simple.
The Oregon House this week passed a right to repair bill by nearly a 3-to-1 margin at 42 votes to 13.
If signed into law, the northwestern state wouldn’t be the first the union to pass a right to repair bill (more like the fourth), but the legislation contains aggressive language that goes beyond those on the books.
“Apple agrees with the vast majority of Senate Bill 1596,” John Perry, Apple senior manager, Secure System Design, said in a testimony to state lawmakers last month.
“By eliminating manufacturer restrictions, the Right to Repair will make it easier for Oregonians to keep their personal electronics running.
they will stand on the hill on is the parts pairing.”The bill has received bipartisan support in both the state Senate and House.
Today, the startup emerged from stealth with the Fused platform, and $1 million in pre-seed funding.
It takes data, fed from satellites, sitting in storage repositories and runs it through its platform to make it usable.
The platform is essentially a middleware processing layer that helps turn the geospatial data into something more consumable.
It consists of several open source pieces and a serverless processing engine.
They can then transfer this data to other programs for further analysis or create data visualizations based on the data.
Co-founders Ozgun Erdogan and Umur Cubukcu previously built Citus Data, where they also met Daniel Farina, who previously was instrumental in building Heroku PostgreSQL.
Citus Data wouldn’t have been possible without,” Cubukcu said.
“Fifteen years ago, all those service [that are on the Ubicloud roadmap] did not have open-source data plane components.
These days, for the core services, all of those now have good open-source alternatives, barring maybe one or two,” he said.
The company currently has 10 employees, split between San Francisco, Amsterdam (where the Citus Data team built a small engineering team during the team’s Microsoft days) and Istanbul.
