Thread: Why Windriver?
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Unread 21-01-2011, 02:55
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dtengineering dtengineering is offline
Teaching Teachers to Teach Tech
AKA: Jason Brett
no team (British Columbia FRC teams)
Team Role: Mentor
  
Join Date: Jan 2005
Rookie Year: 2004
Location: Vancouver, BC
Posts: 1,825
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Re: Why Windriver?
Generally I'm pretty pleased with FIRST. Pleased enough to have stuck around for seven or eight years. Last time I looked, no one was being forced to play the FRC game or use the FRC software. (Can you hear the "but..." coming?)

While I appreciate the donation of software, I also recognize that the support is a blend of philanthropy and shrewd marketing. Giving the software to students and teams that could never afford to buy it does not reduce the sales base for the software, comes at a very low marginal cost, and results in having your product exposed to thousands of people who might become familiar with it and then choose to purchase it a few years down the road. And that's just the students... having the mentors "forced" in to trying out your product is great marketing, too! So one could argue that the donation is a cynical plan to increase profits, or a mutually beneficial "win-win" scenario. I like to believe the latter.

What I don't appreciate, however, is having the licenses expire. After I left for a new job my former school was unable to find the mentors to carry on with FRC this year and... with the Labview license up... have what amounts to a very expensive piece of garbage as a control system.

I suppose they could sell the cRio and replace it... but it would be nice to have it around should they get back, or if another area school starts up an FRC team.

Of course now, with the licenses timed out, it's not like any students at the school are going to be picking up a laptop, firing up the robot, rewiring the code and saying "Hey, this is fun... let's do it again." (Just as an aside... the EasyC licenses for our VEX robots don't expire, and they're still programming and using the VEX kits.)

So it's great that the software is donated, and its great that its an industrial solution, and I'm sure that the FIRST board (who are a pretty bright group of people, after all) feels that it was the best solution for FIRST... but the best solution for FIRST isn't always necesarily the best solution for schools, teams, and students.


Jason