Philosophies on design reuse

[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by Wildcats1378

I've never quite understood how FRC enforces this rule in the first place. Programming, for example: how does FRC know when you've copied code from last year?

Has anyone actually been disqualified for this? It seems more like a moral guideline then an actual rule.

FRC can't enforce the rule. Of course, that begs the question "Why should they need to?"

If teams are really trying to stick by the rules as closely as possible, they already realize that reuse of entire designs or entire chunks of code is a no-no. Unless they post them on-line and make them available to everyone. I believe that's the end goal: to have teams sharing information freely (after the season and before the season) in order to bring everyone along.

If teams didn't share freely, you wouldn't see products like AndyMark's super shifter (designed in 2004 for team use), their AM planetary, and other products / designs. See the trapezoidal motion profile thread for a great example of teams who have a competitive advantage helping to bring others up to speed.

Of course, this all assume that teams get the idea of Gracious Professionalism. I'm going to continue to assume that. Most of the big-name teams constantly prove it (kit-bot on steriods, etc).