[JesseK]

Thanks for the letter Don. It truly reflects what I believe, that our team (well, entire organization...) is flexible so long as FIRST is honest with us. Yet I do believe the example for the FRC control system is in danger of being taken as irrelevant.

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In FRC, when you think about it, what exactly changed?
Did we have to pay more to compete in last season? No.
Did some teams get the opportunity to play 60 matches before they made it to Atlanta? Yes. Some of the rest of us are quite irked by our own lack of opportunity to do so.
Did we get additional options for control? Yes. Were they always better? Not exactly, but that's just life as an engineer tbh.
Do things change for those of us who try to keep old robots running? Yes.
Would you rather FIRST come up with a transition plan to a new control system for teams over 2 years or get it all done in 1 year? In all honesty, I'm particularly grateful we did it in one.
Additionally, NI may have asked FIRST to keep things under wraps until NI was able to make everything official from their perspective. So why exactly are we complaining about this lack of transparency to FIRST?

To me, the complaints that we changed to a new system are just like a lobbyist session on Capitol Hill. Every lobbyist has a say in what they want yet they forgo their rights to listen to others or the big picture. They want what they want, that's all they care about, and they'll explode even an infinitesimal irrelevant detail into a big deal if they think it will help them get it.

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For the FTC-FVC debocle ... well, I don't know if we'll ever get the truth out of that one. There are many rumors, and (to me) one of them makes complete logical sense no matter how I look at it. Yet the only concrete fact from it all is that now FIRSTers now have other options for a small robotics platform, and either platform has its pros and cons.