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Last active September 17, 2015 03:17
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[FTC] Open Source, Please

Hi,

I've seen a lot of mentors making their voices heard on this thread, but I thought it'd be useful for a student to say something. So here I am.

I'm a programmer representing 2856. The fact that we cannot get access to the source code of FTC's software is a major problem that actively impedes our productivity. The fact that we can't look at the APIs available to us and can't look at how they work is a real issue, and this is compounded by the fact that documentation is scarce. Almost by definition, there is no better documentation than (commented) source code. Anything else is inherently a distillation and reproduction of what is really going on.

Here I speak for myself, and not the rest of my team (or other teams), but it also seems fairly obvious that FIRST simply lacks the resources to polish up the software, fix bugs, etc. I get it, truly - you've been experiencing a shocking amount of growth in the past couple years, and it's hard to keep up. I understand. But I just can't wrap my head around why you won't let us, the community, help you out. What do you have to lose? Let the community take some of the load off of you by helping to maintain the software. That way, we get what we want faster, and you don't have to worry as much about about responding to us and polishing the software. It's a win-win situation.

Finally (and I'm still speaking for myself), it feels like the antithesis of FIRST's mission to deny us access to the source. It's so frustrating to see an organization like FIRST, which is so into learning and does such a great job promoting STEM education in other areas, fall so very short in this one arena.

Please make it a priority to release the source code, but if not, at least provide binaries with obfuscation turned down. Please.

Thanks.

Alex Jordan, 2856

@NoahRoseLedesma
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Was your post removed on the forum? I was going to piggyback you but I cant find the post.

@strugee
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strugee commented Sep 17, 2015

Was your post removed on the forum? I was going to piggyback you but I cant find the post.

I haven't posted it yet. I wanted Gabe's approval.

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