Team 166 Has Open Sourced Its Code

[ay2b]

Originally Posted by Eric Finn

EDIT: Our chopshop library (CHOPSHOP.C and CHOPSHOP.H) has been uploaded. This library contains our code from previous years (EEPROM, drive algorithms, etc.) that we keep from year to year. More current code will be uploaded once the writers believe that it's ready to release. Again, thank you for notifying us of the licensing issues.

Be careful with this one too. You are not permitted to directly reuse code from previous years, just as you are not permitted to directly reuse hardware components from previous years. You are, however, permitted to use the designs, ideas and algorithms from past years, but your implementation is supposed to be new each year, implemented during the build season (and fix-it windows).

Any code which is published publicly, in a location widely recognized by FIRST teams, is considered COTS and is permitted to be used directly, as per the COTS rules. This allows the use of Kevin's code, or IFI's code, and allows them to update it outside the build season, and all teams to use any version of it.

It is my interpretation of this rule, that if you were to have published your code from past years on CD, or on sourceforge and announced it on CD, then that code would also be considered COTS and would be permitted. It is not clear to me: if you were to develop something prior to the build season, and then publish it during the build season, would that still be considered COTS?

Unfortunately, in my quick perusal of the rules, I am unable to find the exact rules at this time in order to quote them here. Hopefully someone else can help me out, find them and post them.