[Rachel Lim]

I believe that this ruling was not intended to hurt teams, and that their intention was good. The way I read it, they want teams to do well at competition, but they want them to do well and feel ownership of their robot, and be inspired by what they accomplished.

Where I feel that this ruling made its error is the line it drew between having other teams help, and being inspired. I'm glad they remembered to keep the section about allowing teams to help other teams with their robot, as long as the original team is activity working on it and the second is just advising, but I don't see why a better team can't help other teams more. As long as both are happy with the balance, and both teams agree on it, I don't see why FIRST shouldn't.

I think that the real issue here is once again how people are inspired. It is in many ways like the question of what role mentors play (which I am not trying to start a debate on, so please don't...). The balance will always vary by person and by team.

Some teams will prefer to keep their own robot, work on it by themselves, and compete with a robot they can completely claim. Others welcome the help better teams can give them, enjoy working with and learning from others and find the improvements outweigh the fact that they release some of their ownership (arguably--I'd say as long as it's their choice to work together, it's their robot).

Overall, I understand what FIRST is trying to aim for, and avoid, but I don't think this is the way they should try to do it. They're trying to bring back the idea that inspiration, not winning, is their higher goal, but in doing so forget that learning from others--and success--is its own type of inspiration.

The ruling was also extremely confusing to read, which is something they should try to change in my opinion. I wish they could just say what their intention is and skip the overly complicated details, but they we'd probably be in a debate of what fits their intention and what doesn't...