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Originally Posted by DareDad
Greater than the FRC event API? That's pretty darned open. Anyone can take the data from the events and massage it and display it anyway they want. I myself have plans to work with it but no time yet.
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I think you're misunderstanding what we mean by open source, and are confusing it with a publicly available API. From
Wikipedia:
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In production and development, open source as a development model promotes a universal access via a free license to a product's design or blueprint, and universal redistribution of that design or blueprint, including subsequent improvements to it by anyone.
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For some more information about open source development models, read through
this page
The FRC API is not open source, because I can not access the code running on FIRST's servers. They have published an interface for the API, but not the implementation details.
For example, it would have been beneficial to have the API open source this past weekend, when it went belly up. If members of the community had access to the source code, they could have been able to find the root cause of the issue and helped collaborate with FIRST on a fix. This would result in faster iteration and higher quality code.
A popular project that embodies many benefits of open source is the
Linux kernel. It's the basis for a totally free (as in libre, not gratis) operating system, and is very heavily used in development circles. It is community written (over 4,500 different people have contributed), and is (in my opinion, but debate on this can be for another thread) the best OS out there.
As for your comments about FMS - it may not be feasible to run the software without access to the field hardware, but there is still value in making it open source. Namely, increased transparency. If people have the ability to go through the source and understand how it works, a lot of the mystery is taken out of plugging into the field (when you know exactly what is happening behind the scoring table). It would also let the community understand how and why some of the bugs in FMS (and believe me, they exist) are there, and possibly contribute to a fix, which means the bug could be patched faster than it would be otherwise.