Ethics 101: To re-use or not to re-use?

[Alexa Stott]

Originally Posted by Dave Scheck

I disagree with the proposed idea.

My reasoning is that I think that this will punish teams that actually take the time to create well written, reusable code. They have put in the time to create this product....why should they be forced to share this with a team that doesn't put in the effort? What is the motivation of a new team to actually learn how to write code when they can go out and download the prewritten code of their choice? What is the motivation for a team to post their code in a legible format?

I have to agree with David on this one. As a programmer, I have witnessed how much time, effort, and frustration it takes to maybe even get a small part of the robot working. You write some code, test it, change it, test it again, etc. This could go on for hours. How is it fair to that team that sits there writing and testing the code to post it online for anyone to see?

I can see how this would help enforce the rule, but the outcome isn't fair to the programmers that spend 14-hour days writing code for their robot only to have a team that is too lazy or too inexperienced come and just copy it all. Moreover, how is that helping to teach students how to program if they know that pre-written, working code is out there for them to just download? I know you can all sit there and say "Well, they would do the right thing...they would be GP and not steal it...blah, blah, blah." But honestly, if you know you could skip those hours upon hours of coding and spend 2 minutes downloading someone else's code, you know you'd be typing in the URL to that site.

Don't get me wrong-I'm entirely open to helping other teams with programming help if they PM/email/IM/approach me at a competition asking for it. I'm more than willing to let people look at our code to get an idea of how it works. But this brings to a new level. At least when they talk to me directly, I know what their problem, unlike the people that would be downloading code from this "central location."