Re: BOM rule - was:: Ready-made VP at World Champs

From: <john_kagan_at_hotmail.com>
Date: 06 Mar 2018 22:19:26 +0000

To be clear, this is a difficult situation, but allowing purchased hubs, even temporarily, is not a victimless solution. People are going to be impacted either way

I assure you that certain purchased hubs are much better than the ones I made

The only thing to do is follow the rules, and then change the rules for the future if we, collectively, don't want the BOM rule, or we want to make specific exceptions

If we do otherwise, and someone manages to win with a purchased hub, there will be a permanent asterisk

I haven't yet seen an argument for how a purchased hub does not involve "building". Here is what I have seen:

- "Everyone else is doing it" I'm not sure a lot of people plan to compete with purchased hubs (I know of people who aren't), but even if they are, that doesn't make them compliant with BOM

- "Purchased hubs have been used for a long time" This is like trying to get out of a speeding ticket by saying I always drive 50mph in school zones

- "There are certain materials/components that are harder to categorize as "built" or "not built", therefore nothing can be categorized" This does not logically follow. Are boron filaments"built"? (No, the are accumulated on a substrate) Is balsa "built"? (No, it is grown) Is a VP hub built? Of course it is.

- "Lots of people will be impacted" Not proven IMO, but also irrelevant to the rule

- "A rule change is required to "ban" purchased hubs" The existing rule requires the competitor to be the builder
Received on Tue Mar 06 2018 - 22:19:30 CET