Chief Delphi should be in the running. It's up to the judges to decide individually what does and what does not count.
If they pulled themselves out, then I respect them all the more.
Yes, there are different degrees of dependence on your own ingenuity.
Chief Delphi uses third party software entirely.
www.theforceteam.com was created by a friend of mine in GoLive, with pics he created, and is hosted off the webserver that is sitting on my homework room floor right next to me, using PHP, SSL, mySQL, FTP, and Apache that I set up myself and am hosting off my own DSL connection.
Now, I'm sure there are some people out there who wrote their HTML in Notepad, drew and scanned their pics, and built their own webserver as well.
But the simple fact is that not one person out here has built a computer from scratch, then an operating system, then a text editor, then a programming language viewable by conventional web browsers, and THEN made their own site, hosted off a completely new international system of networks comprising a virtual seperate Internet and convinced everyone else to tap into it as well.
That's an example of the only purely student-designed-and-run website possible.
Obviously, no one has done that.
Where do you draw the line on reliance?
Up for the judges to decide.
I'd say that as long as something is configured by students, they have a right to use it. Mentors can't be the primary builders, nor can a sponsor. But as long as students do most of the work and do not claim to have written the source code to whatever third party programs they are using, they're fine.
--Petey