Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber
Strongest supporter of FIRST, IFI. Consider the millions of dollars a year given away to teams in control systems, speed controllers, transmissions, and chassis material over the last couple years. Consider the thousands of hours of time spent supporting all that.
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Not to take anything at all away from IFI (I think those guys are absolutely great), but all of that stuff was provided under a paid contract, not donated. Was it provided at a significantly discounted price, with IFI absorbing some of the cost? Absolutely. But it was not donated for free.
I think the role for strongest supporter of FIRST has to go to Autodesk. Nobody else is even a close second. Think about it - they have donated full-function versions of their software to every FRC team for the past 18 years. Over the years, that has totaled up to over 12,500 teams* receiving their software. The number of software seats per team has been increasing over the years but a conservative estimate of 65,000 seats is reasonable, based on the years that Autodesk provided 1, 5, 10 or unlimited seats per team. At an average price of $8,000 per seat** that is $520 million dollars worth of products that Autodesk has donated to FIRST teams. Yup - they have provided over half a BILLION dollars of support for this program.
EVERY team, whether you actively use their software or not, should send a huge "thank you!" to Autodesk for demonstrating a level of commitment to FIRST teams and the students in FRC that eclipses all others. If a few more companies followed their lead and showed their level of commitment, we actually might be able to get robotics competition teams in every high school in the country, and fundamentally change the way STEM education is implemented.
-dave
* source: FRC team count, FIRST 2008 Annual Report
** market price for combined 3DS Max / Inventor software package
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