Quote:
Originally Posted by Cory
If a tech company offers to pay for the machining I see no difference between that and a machine shop donating the labor directly. It's just the tech company donating the service in that case. I would argue parts made in either scenario could be used without accounting for FMV of the labor.
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Okay, let's take this and run with it.
Money is fungible. Is it substantively different if said tech company donates $5000 to my team, and specifies that it is for machining, or if they donate $5000 without said specification and we spend it on machining? Even if the budget works out exactly the same regardless of said specification?
I think it's pretty silly to argue that these are somehow fundamentally different situations - in fact, if we say that they are, then anyone can get around this rule simply by going to sponsors who have donated money and asking those sponsors to specify (somewhat meaninglessly) that the money is to be used for machining. Which means that, if we follow this logic,
any machining that is ultimately paid for by money that comes from a sponsor ought to not count towards the robot budget.
If this is indeed how the rule works: Great! The rule is effectively not there, and there's no problem.
But I doubt that this is how the rule works, and thus the rule seems utterly defective.