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Ardupilot To Continue As Non-Profit (diydrones.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the diversified-community dept.

New submitter buck-yar writes: The open source unmanned aerial vehicle platform, Ardupilot, has announced its creation of a non-profit organization aimed to meet the needs of the diverse developer community. With 3DRobotics recently pulling their financial support for the Ardupilot project, the developers had to take a look at how the project would continue. Yesterday, Andrew Tridgell announced the developers will create a non-profit to oversee the project similar to other non-profits in the open source community as it continues to grow. The organization will oversee the management of the documentation, the auto-build and test servers and will help set priorities for future development. "Intel has well over 10 developers devoted to DroneCode projects including at least 2 working on Ardupilot full-time and a few others improving QGroundControl to work better with Ardupilot," developer Randy MacKay writes on an Ardupilot Arducopter APM Pixhawk News forum. While the non-profit ArduPilot project and consulting businesses will be separate entities, the dev team says they will help support each other.

10 comments

  1. So many by bobbutts · · Score: 1

    Busy space. Just from my head we've got Ardupilot, OpenPilot, LibrePilot, Cleanflight, Baseflight.

    1. Re: So many by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And LifeFlight, CareFlight, PooperScooper

    2. Re:So many by andydread · · Score: 1

      and don't forget dRonin which is a fork of TauLabs which is a fork of Openpilot.

    3. Re:So many by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...and Paparazzi UAV

  2. fate of the pixhawk? by Haven · · Score: 1

    Anyone know the fate of the pixhawk platform?

    1. Re:fate of the pixhawk? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I know nothing, but I assume 32bit/Pixhawk & Nuttx are the reason for this move.

    2. Re:fate of the pixhawk? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Anyone know the fate of the pixhawk platform?

      http://diydrones.com/group/pixhawk-2/forum/topics/what-is-pixhawk-2

    3. Re:fate of the pixhawk? by andydread · · Score: 1

      link is broken.

    4. Re:fate of the pixhawk? by Kryptonut · · Score: 1

      The clone market still appears to be thriving, so even if 3DR stop making the Pixhawk, you'll still be able to grab one direct from China easily enough. In fact, there are some revised, cut down (in size and some connectors) versions now in case the original is too big and bulky for your craft.

  3. They only read part of our post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We are not going non profit. We have nearly a thousand companies using ArduPilot for profit in their vehicles.
    The relationship between ArduPilot and 3D Robotics has allowed both parties to grow tremendously but it has always been hard for other companies to know how to engage the dev team and understand the role of 3D Robotics. We have moved ArduPilot to a place where there is better way to connect more of those companies with the dev team instead of just a select few.
    We have outgrown one company a thousand times over. It is time to take the next step.