I didn't know it was funded by an ex-googler, Mr Hassan, however I did try ros a few times and it seems a very well designed platform to get started on robotics.<p>I really like ROS:<p>- it has an arduino plugin to immediately get the arduino integrated in the ROS ecosystem (i.e. rostopic) , ideal for novices like myself<p>- it has lots of packages from kinect/xtion to drive servo motors like dynamixel's<p>- OpenCV bridge<p>I mostly use the python bindings as I find them easier to deal with than compile everything (and possibly cross compile given i'm running ROS on arm and that it would take forever to build there)<p>Sad news!