Ethical dilemma? You decide.

[EricH]

Ooh, YMTC!

Let's look at the rules first:
<R24> does not exactly apply here. It's not a COTS component, though it is inspired by one.

<R33> may be what you really need to look at. Definition of COTS:

COTS – A “Commercial, Off-The-Shelf” COMPONENT or MECHANISM, in its unaltered, unmodified state. A COTS item must be a standard (i.e. not custom order) part commonly available from the VENDOR, available from a non-team source, and available to all teams for purchase.[...]
• Example 3: a team obtains openly available design drawings from a professional publication during the pre-season, and uses them to fabricate a gearbox for their ROBOT during the build period following kick-off. The design drawings would be considered a COTS item, and may be used as “raw material” to fabricate the gearbox. The finished gearbox itself would be a FABRICATED ITEM, and not a COTS item.

But: Does the CNC code, developed by the team, fall into the "design drawings" or the examples given in <R25>?

I'd actually suggest going with the last example in <R25>: You have machine code, and you post it somewhere with appropriate caveats about there may be much better ways to do this, this is only expected to work on this machine type, etc. Now that's COTS machine code, so you can use it. Or you tweak the design a bit.

Given the situation described, I'd say that that code is a Fabricated Item. Until it's tweaked or rewritten or posted in a generally accessible public forum to make it either Fabricated Item after Kickoff or COTS, it's not legal. But it's not robot code...but it's used to make stuff on the robot...

If you decide to do a different gearbox design, then that code will need to be tweaked, so it's appropriately timed for fabricated items. Bonus if you improve it for more speed in fabrication.