Please open source your code!

[kgzak]

We have a really nice autonomous that we will probably be using again next year (doesn't matter the game it will work) so we have to post it somewhere. I'll talk to our other programer and see if he wants to post all our code somewhere. We've been working on a Library of our own VIs that will eventually get posted on our Website.

[Robby Unruh]

Originally Posted by kgzak

We have a really nice autonomous that we will probably be using again next year (doesn't matter the game it will work) so we have to post it somewhere. I'll talk to our other programer and see if he wants to post all our code somewhere. We've been working on a Library of our own VIs that will eventually get posted on our Website.

How strict is this open source rule? Would you get penalized for essentially writing a previous years code? (ie; same task, written differently)
And how would a team that uses the default code every year end up?

All that being said, 3266's code is extremely messy, but I'll release it how we used it at Buckeye. Maybe I'll put up a cleaner version along side it, just so you guys won't associate me as the kid who writes nested ifs EVERYWHERE!

[imac256]

Originally Posted by Robby Unruh

How strict is this open source rule? Would you get penalized for essentially writing a previous years code? (ie; same task, written differently)
And how would a team that uses the default code every year end up?

In my interpretation of the rule, as long as the code you are using is available for other FRC teams to use the rule is satisfied. Therefore open-sourcing a library which you developed this year would allow you to use it in future years (at least that is how my team has understood the rules).

My team has placed all of our code and documentation into one place located here: http://tinyurl.com/frc2022docs. This site contains all of our code since our founding in 2007 under the area called "Programming Documents" and it contains our documentation area which we are in the process of creating. We saw a need for the documentation from year to year because releasing the code isn't enough to teach people how to program it, so we are creating little tutorials to help with that.

[demosthenes2k8]

My team only has our past code from the last three years, and it's only REALLY organized for the last two. We always believed it meant what imac thought.

[Robby Unruh]

3266's code for the (in-dev) offseason can be found here: http://code.google.com/p/frc3266/

No use releasing our competition code, since this is pretty much an overhaul of that.

[Patrickwhite]

610's code (we use Java) is available on Google code. Note that it is not yet complete - the code we have changed since competition has not yet been uploaded - programmers need breaks too.

Our scouting system is written in PHP, and contains:
- The scouting form
- Access to the database as both HTML and Excel (.csv) tables
- Pick list assistant
- Easy access to stats for six teams (for match planning)
- A page for entering comments on robots, as well as the ability to flag a team as one that we do not work well with

It's currently not open source, but as soon as I finish explaining to one of our heads the important of open sourcing code, it will be.
I mention this because programming a robot is not that special - every team in FIRST does it. What we can learn from looking at someone else's code is not that extensive. However, everyone's scouting implentation (if it exists at all) will be completely different, and what can be learned from looking at that CAN be extensive.

[AllenGregoryIV]

The DiscoBots have opened sourced our code for last two years.

It can be found here on Google Code - http://code.google.com/p/discobots/

We program in Java for FIRST and RobotC for VEX.

[kgzak]

Originally Posted by Robby Unruh

How strict is this open source rule? Would you get penalized for essentially writing a previous years code? (ie; same task, written differently)
And how would a team that uses the default code every year end up?

All that being said, 3266's code is extremely messy, but I'll release it how we used it at Buckeye. Maybe I'll put up a cleaner version along side it, just so you guys won't associate me as the kid who writes nested ifs EVERYWHERE!

I read the rule as if it is publicly available to every other team (hosted on a web site) then you can use the exact same code...that's what we plan on doing. seeing as how we will have one experienced programmer next year, it should help him out a lot. I have been our main programmer, along with one other kid, and our main mentor for software was my dad (I taught him LabView basics, then we both leaned together). The Library should help seeing as I won't be anywhere close so I can help, the other programers will at least have starting blocks.