US Rules Committee to ban XC Soar in US soaring competitioneffective immediately? - Ahh the "genius!"

On Feb 24, 10:09*am, Sean Fidler wrote:
I hate to bring this up again...but I must.

I have learned this morning that XCSoar is to be banned from US soaring competitions. In fact our rules committee is apparently planning to also ban all free, open source applications because they "feel" they cannot control whether these applications may implement artificial horizons and other "cheater" functionality. Clearly these elite rule makers don't seem to understand how easy it is to install and use a different apps (or simply build your own) for these cheater AH functions and have decided to inconvenience many pilots in US Soaring Competition in a last ditched effort to maintain their completely unenforceable AH rule.

Please confirm or deny, US Rules Committee, this news for the US Pilots who use or have just started to use this outstanding, free and intensely popular software...XC Soar? *You might save alot of people $300 on their android PDA they are buying to run it...

While they get back to us...this news is apparently true (confirmed by XC Soar Developers) and the folks over at the US Rules Committee are working hard to write up the documentation required to ban XC Soar for US Pilots as we speak.

Gentleman of the US Rules Committee. *I have officially lost all respect for your leadership assuming this is true. *This is without question the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard of in any of the many sports that I have been involved in over my lifetime.

As you (Rules Committee) darn well know...many in the US have actually spent winter preparing XC Soar for this season and buying Dell Streaks to run XC Soar on.

Maybe we should start banning pee systems aimed aft because they give us extra thrust? *While your at it maybe we should ban compasses because I can promise you that I can hold course in IMC with that instrument and an airspeed indicator alone? *Maybe ban the Airspeed Indicator too? *How about we ban all instrumentation altogether and just use the force? *How about we ban pilots from watching star wars movies? *They might learn something and become able to fly with their eyes closed?

I look forward to more comedy in the weeks to come per your upcoming announcement of this ban of XC soar and any other FREE Navigation Software.

Wow! *You cant make this kind of stuff up...

Sincerely,

Sean Fidler
F2

The statement put on the XCSoar Facebook page is not accurate,
Stand by for the policy which will be available very soon.
UH

wrote:
The statement put on the XCSoar Facebook page is not accurate,

Not accurate? Let me paste a verbatim email you wrote to a XCSoar
developer yesterday:

"Thanks for your views. When we construct our list, we now know to
put XCSoar on the list as non compliant and not approved for use in
US competition."

[unclhank 24. Februar 2012 00:44]

I hope this is accurate enough for you.

Max

I rest my case.

RESPECT IS GONE. Confirmed.

On Feb 24, 11:07*am, Max Kellermann wrote:
wrote:
The statement put on the XCSoar Facebook page is not accurate,

Not accurate? *Let me paste a verbatim email you wrote to a XCSoar
developer yesterday:

*"Thanks for your views. *When we construct our list, we now know to
*put XCSoar on the list as non compliant and not approved for use in
*US competition."

*[unclhank 24. Februar 2012 00:44]

I hope this is accurate enough for you.

Max

This statement was in response to the position by the XCSoar
individual that indicated that they would not be providing a version
that would permit users to comply with US rules as requested by the RC
of the XCSoar group.
At no point have we indicated intent to not permit open source
software.
To be fair, there are others within the XCSoar group who are more
inclined to help work this out so pilots can have complying software.
Hopefully they will succeed.
UH

wrote:
This statement was in response to the position by the XCSoar
individual that indicated that they would not be providing a version
that would permit users to comply with US rules as requested by the RC
of the XCSoar group.

No, no, you are now being very inaccurate. To remind you of how it
really was, here's what you replied to:

"As I mentioned earlier, we could publish a stripped version, but
unless anyone can prove how this will be useful to catch cheaters, we
won't put much work into it."

Can you?

Max

LK8000 will not "put much work into it" as well.
If XCSoar delivers a stripped version, we shall do the same.
If XCSoar does not deliver a stripped version, and shall be put on the black
list, LK8000 will be there too.

Paolo , for LK8000

"Max Kellermann" ha scritto nel messaggio
...
wrote:
This statement was in response to the position by the XCSoar
individual that indicated that they would not be providing a version
that would permit users to comply with US rules as requested by the RC
of the XCSoar group.

No, no, you are now being very inaccurate. To remind you of how it
really was, here's what you replied to:

"As I mentioned earlier, we could publish a stripped version, but
unless anyone can prove how this will be useful to catch cheaters, we
won't put much work into it."

Can you?

Max

On Friday, February 24, 2012 11:37:56 AM UTC-5, Max Kellermann wrote:
wrote:
This statement was in response to the position by the XCSoar
individual that indicated that they would not be providing a version
that would permit users to comply with US rules as requested by the RC
of the XCSoar group.

No, no, you are now being very inaccurate. To remind you of how it
really was, here's what you replied to:

"As I mentioned earlier, we could publish a stripped version, but
unless anyone can prove how this will be useful to catch cheaters, we
won't put much work into it."

Can you?

Max

As a constructive thought for all of the software developers out there, working on either a commercial or an open-source model:

This isn't the first nor is it the last time that local rules/procedures are going to come up. You already have significant differences in areas such as task formats, scoring optimization, airspace configuration, and many, many others. If I were in your shoes, I would certainly consider a localization scheme that allows you to manage various UI and feature sets based on chosen location. From there, it's not hard to see a way forward in terms of compliance AND perhaps to further improve the usability of the software at the same time.

I would suggest that the various rule-making bodies at various NACs certainly have the right and even the responsibilty to set standards, so digging in one's heals will probably just result in frustration on all sides...

Respectfully,
P3

Th



On Friday, February 24, 2012 11:37:56 AM UTC-5, Max Kellermann wrote:
wrote:
This statement was in response to the position by the XCSoar
individual that indicated that they would not be providing a version
that would permit users to comply with US rules as requested by the RC
of the XCSoar group.

No, no, you are now being very inaccurate. To remind you of how it
really was, here's what you replied to:

"As I mentioned earlier, we could publish a stripped version, but
unless anyone can prove how this will be useful to catch cheaters, we
won't put much work into it."

Can you?

Max



On Friday, February 24, 2012 11:37:56 AM UTC-5, Max Kellermann wrote:
wrote:
This statement was in response to the position by the XCSoar
individual that indicated that they would not be providing a version
that would permit users to comply with US rules as requested by the RC
of the XCSoar group.

No, no, you are now being very inaccurate. To remind you of how it
really was, here's what you replied to:

"As I mentioned earlier, we could publish a stripped version, but
unless anyone can prove how this will be useful to catch cheaters, we
won't put much work into it."

Can you?

Max

On Feb 24, 11:22*am, wrote:
On Feb 24, 11:07*am, Max Kellermann wrote:

wrote:
The statement put on the XCSoar Facebook page is not accurate,

Not accurate? *Let me paste a verbatim email you wrote to a XCSoar
developer yesterday:

*"Thanks for your views. *When we construct our list, we now know to
*put XCSoar on the list as non compliant and not approved for use in
*US competition."

*[unclhank 24. Februar 2012 00:44]

I hope this is accurate enough for you.

Max

This statement was in response to the position by the XCSoar
individual that indicated that they would not be providing a version
that would permit users to comply with US rules as requested by the RC
of the XCSoar group.
At no point have we indicated intent to not permit open source
software.
To be fair, there are others within the XCSoar group who are more
inclined to help work this out so pilots can have complying software.
Hopefully they will succeed.
UH

Context matters. Often, knowing the writer personally helps.

I was in on this exchange, I know UH personally, I knew it wasn't the
end of the conversation. I can understand that my German friend
Tobias on the other end may have understood things differently, not
for the least reason being that it was close to midnight his time.

As I see it, we have short term problems on some platforms... and a
longer term potential solution that might work. I'm handicapped here
in that I haven't written any code in 15 years and I was just a hack,
never in the class that our XCS developers are. So really, I can
suggest solutions, but I cannot implement them. I'm pretty sure the
level of willing help and cooperation is going to go down FAST if the
name calling and finger pointing keeps up.

-Evan Ludeman / T8

And what of the countless other means of installing AH capabilities on these devices, cell phones, smart phones, watches? If it is your intent to ensure that no contest pilot has this capability in the cockpit, that is next to impossible. And if you still want to go for it what is the cost in aggravation to the average pilot?

Are we going to strong arm all equipment manufacturers into eliminating those capabilities from their products? Are we going to inspect pilots cockpits for hiding places of these electronic devices on the grid? It is already going too far. It will have to go much, much further to be anywhere near enforceable.

If someone wants to try and cheat, they will be able to do so easily.

This is the wrong approach in general. As with electonic vario's and GPS's, learn from history. We should simply let it go!!!! Or at minimum we should have a set of rules for Nationals and Worlds and a open policy for regional's.

On a final note...I really do not appreciate the attack on XC Soar. I do not think the committee has any idea how much work they are doing and how difficult it is to change midstream in their late stage development of V6.3 and do whatever modifications to their code that committee is requesting. It does not work like that. I find it rude and of very poor taste to make the statement that was made to XC soar. It boarders on un-ethical. Who do we think we are?

This should have thought of this LONG ago if it was that important. Just because committee was unaware of a massive problem in your own rules does not mean everyone else must drop what they are doing to fix your so called problem immediately (or else we will ban you). And oh by the way screw a large number of our own contest pilots who invested alot of time and money in getting it all working.

On Feb 24, 11:22*am, wrote:

To be fair, there are others within the XCSoar group who are more
inclined to help work this out so pilots can have complying software.
Hopefully they will succeed.

To be very clear, it would be trivial for a programmer to disable the
artificial horizon feature (which is a very tiny info box that I'd
find barely useable even as a get-out-of-jail safety feature).

Once the rules have been clarified, and as long as there are no
requirements that an application cannot technically implement without
major difficulties, some people either related or unrelated to the
XCSoar project will step forward and will make an Android version
available on the Android market that is "ready for competition". This
would have the info box removed or permanently disabled, and it would
display the fact that it rules-compliant loud and clear in the splash
screen. The IGC log file would carry evidence of the software used.

It's open source and licensed as free software, and there is no
unsurmountable difficulty in doing this. It may be difficult to
convince Max K to spend his time on this, but that does not mean that
nobody else would step forward.

So, relax.