View Single Post
  #34   Spotlight this post!  
Unread 02-01-2008, 00:35
shawger shawger is offline
Programming Subteam Leader
FRC #1732 (Hilltopper Robotics)
Team Role: Alumni
 
Join Date: Nov 2006
Rookie Year: 2006
Location: Wisconsin
Posts: 60
shawger will become famous soon enough
Re: Open-source FRC code

JBotAlan - Yes, you are correct. GPL is fine for diffs, but you cannot redistribute your code along with Kevin's (which I guess his license prevents anyway). Sorry, I got confused with the whole distribution thing.

I'm surprised you don't want anybody copying the code verbatim though. If you don't want that, why not just release psuedo-ish code to show the process you went through? I'm not sure what the point of making the code open-source is if nobody can use it.

I personally believe a publicly available repository of code used by FIRST teams would be a major asset and even contribute to leveling the playing field between teams with huge resources and teams with few resources. Besides, a lot of the code will need to change, unless you release your complete robot plans and someone clones your robot too. I find it unlikely that someone would blindly copy a piece of code into their robot, and have it actually work properly.