Quote:
Originally Posted by Rich Kressly
I don't see a team here that is cutting these kinds of deals with a boatload of teams to become a "distributor" of any kind. I see teams helping one another. If NI and or FIRST were to come forward with an explicit rule about this type of exchange, then I'd certainly abide by a clear and stated rule. Until then, I'll still be ignorant of how this type of logic and thinking is formed.
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Rich -
Don't worry. You have it exactly right.
Let's be very clear here. There are no rules violations. There are no ethics violations.
First off, any rules regarding use of the cRIO for the 2009 FRC competition are now obsolete and irrelevant. Those rules applied only to the 2009 competition, and not to any future events or activities. So even if there were a 2009 season rule against this practice (which there was not), it is no longer in effect and does not matter. The rules for the 2010 season have (obviously) not yet been published. It is intuitively obvious that neither team can be in violation of the 2010 rules. Ergo, there is no rules violation.
So let's move on to the ethics discussion. The arguments presented so far regarding a violation of some mythical ethics standards are based on assumptions, not facts.
The facts are simple: NI will sell one discounted cRIO unit to each team per year. NI will sell multiple full-price cRIO units to each team per year. NI has not made any statement about their specific motivations for these sales options. NI does not include any post-sales restrictions on the use, reuse, resale, or redistribution of purchased cRIO units other than those found in the standard
cRIO Terms Of Sale. NI has not publicized any statement of prohibition against a team doing anything they want with their cRIO once they have purchased it.
It is important to note that NI has
not said "we are making a special offer available so that each FRC team can obtain exactly one additional cRIO unit per year." Nor have they said "we are making these available so that each team will use the additional cRIO exclusively for their own development purposes." If they had, then we might have additional information to explain the desires and motives behind the offer. But such statements have not been made. Without any such statements, we have NO information to support any judgment. Without an ability to form a judgment, no conclusion about a putative ethics violation can be made.
To date, all the arguments against the ethics of this trade have followed the same basic formula: NI has not offered a particular reason for the discount offer. Lacking a stated reason, someone speculates on a possible rationale. Based on that speculation, they then create a mythic set of ethics to accompany the deal. Finally, they superimpose their (misguided?) ethics on NI and insist that their own ethics be recognized as those of NI.
Unfortunately, all of these arguments have the same fundamental weakness: they are based on speculations unsupported by any available facts. Statements like "The way NI has it set up, it's supposed to be…" are without any basis in fact. As such they are meaningless conjectures, with no more value than the unsupported speculations. Any conclusions drawn from them are equally weak. I don’t know about anyone else, but I am loath to accuse anyone of a violation of any ethical or moral standards based on logic this faulty.
-dave
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I like anything that is designed to bounce for up to 10 minutes. Expecially if it lands right side up :) - GregT [more] 
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