Quote:
Originally Posted by sanddrag
Now teams have only 3 days (one of which is a holiday) to make a decision and act on a rule released prior to kickoff (which has never been done before), without knowing the game? But we have a week during build season to do our window shopping on FIRST Choice....
Some teams may want to make a decision about open-sourcing their past designs only after the new game is announced, and I don't in any way fault them for that. It's strategic, and is not uncommon in the business world. But now, the new rule makes it a philosophical decision instead of a strategic one, which I'm not necessarily in favor of.
Also, what constitutes "publicly available?" If it's not posted, but you (or anyone else) ask for it, and I e-mail it to you, is that publicly available? If I post it at some obscure link online that no one will ever find, but is not behind any sort of password or restriction, is that publicly available? What if I sat in front of the grocery store next to the girl scouts selling cookies, and I had a table full of free flash drives with our robot files on it?
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This is not a new rule.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by 2014 FRC Game Manual
ROBOT elements created before Kickoff are not permitted. ROBOT elements, including software, that are designed
before Kickoff are not permitted.
Exceptions include the following:
A. BUMPERS,
B. OPERATOR CONSOLE,
C. battery assemblies per R5-A, and
D. software and designs with source files publicly available prior to Kickoff.
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Emphasis mine.
All Frank is doing is telling us that this rule is still there, reminding us that it exists, and clarifying it.
If teams could release the design after kickoff, that would defeat the purpose of this rule. It exists to encourage teams to share their experience and help make the entire FRC community stronger at building robots. If a team is down for doing that, then they should release all of their previous CAD and code for everybody to use (or at least the stuff that they think will be useful). If not, than they don't get to enjoy the benefits of using it themselves. There should be no trying to manipulate the system and only making things public to benefit your team.