Canonical
on 6 April 2021
Canonical ROS ESM customers now can access a long-term supported ROS and Ubuntu environment by the Ubuntu and ROS experts. Learn more about ROS ESM.
6 April 2021: Canonical and Open Robotics announced today a partnership for Robot Operating System (ROS) Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) and enterprise support, as part of Ubuntu Advantage, Canonical’s service package for Ubuntu. ROS support will be made available as an option to Ubuntu Advantage support customers. As a result, users already taking advantage of critical security updates and Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) fixes now have a single point of contact to guarantee timely and high quality fixes for ROS.
Together, the two companies support the robotics community by making ROS robots and services easier to build and package, simpler to manage, and more reliable to deploy.
“With ROS deployed as part of so many commercial products and services, it’s clear that our community needs a way to safely run robots beyond their software End-Of-Life dates. Canonical’s track record delivering ESM, together with our deep understanding of the ROS code base, make this partnership ideal. Ubuntu Linux has been central to the ROS project from the beginning, when we released ROS Box Turtle on Ubuntu Hardy over a decade ago” says Brian Gerkey, CEO of Open Robotics. “We’re excited to be part of this offering that will enable users to access quality support from both organizations.”
“Canonical’s Ubuntu has been the primary platform for ROS since inception. Now open robots are rapidly and fundamentally changing what is possible in the physical world” said Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical. “We are delighted to deepen our engagement with Open Robotics to secure the robots of the future, and simplify the lives of those responsible for creating and operating them”.
ROS ESM is Canonical’s offering for ROS developers that enables them to access a hardened and long-term supported ROS system for robots and its applications on Ubuntu. ROS ESM provides backports for critical security updates, Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) fixes, and critical bug fixes for your ROS environment. By enabling Canonical’s ESM repositories you will get trusted and stable binaries for your ROS and Ubuntu base OS distribution. ROS ESM is available for End-Of-Life distributions as well as Long-Term Support versions of ROS.
ROS is an open-source framework that helps researchers and developers build and reuse code between robotics applications. More than just software, ROS is also a global open-source community of engineers, developers and academics who contribute to making robots better, more accessible and available to everyone. ROS has been adopted into some of the biggest names in robotics.
About Canonical
Canonical is the company behind Ubuntu, the leading OS for container, cloud, and hyperscale computing. Through its open-source tools such as snaps for packaging your ROS project and Ubuntu Core to enhance security for mission-critical robots, Canonical has been supporting the management and upgrading of robot software. This is a common and significant problem faced by the robotics community. Learn more here>.
About Open Robotics
Working with the global community, Open Robotics offers two open platforms: ROS and Gazebo. ROS (Robot Operating System) is a software development kit to build robot applications. Gazebo is a widely used tool for accurately and efficiently simulating robots. Open Robotics is the hub of the global robotics community. Open Robotics creates open software and hardware platforms for robotics and uses those platforms to solve important problems and help others to do the same. Learn more here>.
