**FIRST EMAIL**/Looking for Beta Test Teams

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Jack Jones

Was the NDA in place to keep them from misinforming the rest?

That was a small but significant part of it. The distribution of information from beta testing wasn't so much restricted as it was regulated. Things were changing constantly, so immediate disclosure of small details could easily be completely irrelevant to the non-testing teams. A big part of what came out of the beta test process was the documentation provided with the FRC control system, with corrections and clarifications incorporated.

But giving select teams the system early is not the only reason I’m against it. I’m against it because it’s a very poor replacement for having the right information provided by the experts who designed the system and who’ve work out the bugs in the actual environment.

The experts who designed the system shouldn't be the ones to find bugs in the actual environment. That task should fall to people who work in the actual environment -- in other words, beta testers.

Give us a good system and we’re capable of figuring it out. We do it with the game design, the KoP, and all the rest without knowing before kick-off. The control system should be no different.

The game is tested, debugged, and tweaked a lot before kickoff by people who didn't invent it. The control system should be no different.