You might have noticed that there's a sudden burst of teams posting links to their prior year's code and CAD drawings on Chief Delphi. Wondering why? Read on.
R13 of the 2015 Rules states:
Software and mechanical/electrical designs created before Kickoff are only permitted if the source files (complete information sufficient to produce the design) are available publicly prior to Kickoff.
So, if you have that great robot vision program from previous years, or that crazy 5 CIM continuously variable gearbox from last year's bot, and want to use it on this year's robot, you need to publish the design.
What does publish mean? The examples in the rules all say:
- post it in a generally accessible public forum
- make the code available to all Teams
A story. Last year at a competition I was asked to consult on a robot's control system issue. We spent quite a bit of time going through the source code of the robot to see what the issue was. Reading the source code, it was clear to me that the code represented many years worth of work. I took a note of the team's number because I was interested in reviewing the code later at home.
After the competition, I took a look around for the team's code, and wasn't able to find it online anywhere. That's not right.
The concept behind R13 is that the work product -- the robot and its code -- represents the work of the current team. Requiring sharing of designs and source code helps level the playing field and increases the quality of robots from all teams. It deliberately reduces the (big) advantage that veteran teams have over new ones.
Finally, a personal note. I love reading team's robot code, and would love to see more published code to look at.
So, there you go. Publishing your code and designs = good.
Jeez, I love my job! :) - dlavery [more] 
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