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

[Dave Scheck]

Originally Posted by Kris Verdeyen

They aren't forced to do anything - in the propoal, those teams are free to do the busy work of re-typing everything.

How is saying "if you're going to reuse all that stuff you already did, you have to waste your time to re-type it" not forcing? Because it has the condition that you don't have to reuse it? I don't buy it. We're here to teach engineering skills, not busy work. If you go back to Dave Flowerday's post about what our team went through at Purdue, I consider that a punishment. We had kids that weren't able to enjoy almost a full day at a competition because they had to perform busy work.

Originally Posted by Kris Verdeyen

Because for anyone to be able to use another team's code, they will have to understand it first. Even the best-intended public code (kev or usfirst) still requires hours to fit into a complex scheme like what's used on a robot.

Granted, but it's not understanding how it works but understanding how to work with it. My previous post explains my stance on this.

Originally Posted by Kris Verdeyen

So that other teams could use it? I don't know. Maybe so they don't have to retype all those comments they left out? Because it makes them feel good? Altruism? First fame? They're trying to get into heaven? It seems more stupid to purposefully obfuscate posted code than to simply re-type it.

I agree that obfuscating the code is more of a hassle than its worth, but I guarantee you there is someone out there that will do it. Then how do you handle that? Require that code be posted in a certain format? Do you then require teams to support any code that they make public?

Why should completely spilling the beans on last year's robot be any different?

There's a difference between sharing a design and handing something out.

The teams that want to make themselves better will seek out the assistance of the teams that they want to learn from. The teams that want to make others better will seek out teams to teach what they've accomplished.

I can't tell you how many requests we received in 2003 about how our autonomous worked. We gave explanations both at competitions and remotely to anybody that requested it. I have seen many teams behave in the same way in all aspects of the competition. Want to know how 71 dragged everybody around the field in 2002? Want to know how 33 automated their arm in 2005? Want to know how team X did Y? Just ask. That's one of the foundations of this program that makes it so great. I can't think of another program in which participants share their secrets.

I really don't intend my involvement in this thread to be an argument. I just think that if we are going to have rules intended to level the playing field, they shouldn't hurt teams that put the effort in to go the extra mile.