[gblake]

Originally Posted by Bongle

IFI's involvement goes far beyond happening to be the supplier of the kits that FTC uses, doesn't it?. I thought there are IFI staff at each regional, making sure that all the custom stuff they supply (field elements like radios mainly) work smoothly. I know this is the case for FRC and I thought it was the case for FTC as well. If FIRST wanted that kind of support, they'd have to enter into some sort of contract with IFI, and apparently that's not in the cards.

So my impression is that without an official FIRST-IFI contract you could certainly have a competition with IFI things, but it wouldn't be as well supported. If something like the field breaks, nobody knows how to fix it (because nobody there would be paid to know such things, it all either volunteers or FIRST management).

....

My direct personal experience is this: In FTC tournaments this season, the types of support you describe above are so unimportant to the tournaments that they may be very safely called "irrelevant" in this discussion.

I do not have direct experience to back up this next assertion:
I strongly believe that if FIRST wanted to hire IFI to assist at Vex-based FTC tournaments, IFI would gladly supply that support to FIRST (just like they would supply it to any customer) at a price saimilar to or less than the prices they charge other customers.

From these lines of reasoning I conclude that the so-called "split" between IFI and FIRST does not create a strong motivation for FIRST to stop using the Vex product line in FTC tournaments. Hence my conclusions of "Red Herring" and "irrelevant".

Blake