[jtdowney]

I am a huge open source advocate however what you are asking is that FIRST essentially stop using the Microchip PIC18, since as chris31 said it would be hard to get them to port it to Unix. That would require a lot more work then I think they are willing to put in for operating systems that only appear in 10% of the desktop market. On the bright side however I have yet to hear of a University level Engineering program that doesn't require even a little Unix work. So that might be a motivator.