After talking to Bob Hammond at length this season about the scoring software, the flaws in it, and the flaws in the entire process through which FIRST developes the scoring software, I can say pretty confidently that we will not be seeing open source scoring software any time soon.
FIRST will definately be looking at how they are doing things before next season, they may go with a new company they may stick with this one. One problem is that every year they goto a new company, or a new software package or a new system just as the bugs from the old system begin to be worked out. The system itself doesn't need to change much from year to year, but rather the gui does and maybe a few other minor tweaks.
I know that many people would love to develope a scoring system for FIRST, there are many people and teams just itching for the oppertunity, many of the people on here are more then qualified for the challenge, however I must say that most people completely underestimate the process.
If it was as easy as everyone thinks, then why has it been such an issue in the past? Why is it that almost every year there are problems with the system? Maybe its because its quit a task to take on. Most people dont realize how complicated the scoring system is. As it controls the field, the scoring, the alliance picking, the seeding, the rankings, everything other then IFI's monitoring stuff and the music and video feeds is controlled by that one system.
I think there will be more talk in the coming months about the scoring system, and I encourage people to try and develope ideas and share those ideas with FIRST, as that is how alot of the great things happen, by making an effort to make a change.
And as far as the multitude of homegrown scoring systems that poped up this year, we have been seeing these for years, however I can say from my own experience that they saved alot of peoples butts this year. both competitions i attended this year, i was involved in the scoring system at, and at both of them we used Dr. Joe's scoring system to keep a double check and a back up of the main scoring system. Which is great, redundancy is a very good thing when its something as vital as ranking and scoring. However i have yet to see any home grown system that has the gui, the control of the sounds, and most importantly control of the field boxes that the real scoring system does, and therein lies the challenge. there is so much more to this problem them people realize.
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Originally Posted by Justin
. Dean and Woodie to some extent are the co-rulers of the FIRST universe, I understand it is their creation and their vision and that naturally creates a desire for them to retain a good deal of the control over it. The question is, and I'm sure many will scoff, does this situation serve the overall goals of FIRST best??
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Although Dean and Woodie are very powerful forces within FIRST, they do not make alot of decisions, nor do they do alot of the day to day operations. This task falls onto a small staff that manages to do an amazing job running this massive beast we call FIRST every year. This
list has alot of the of the people who make the decisions as to what happens in FIRST, though there is also alot of input from respected people in the community, the staff at FIRST, and other forces that lead them to the decisions that they make.
The issue of secrecy isn't that big of a deal, the software that they have now is pretty much worthless without all the field hardware, i'm sure if you rent the field from FIRST they give you the software, I know that the scorekeepers all had access to the software, updates, backup systems, and doublecheck systems that FIRST released. Its not really a secret its more an issue of people not needing the software because there is nothing they can do with it.