Ted,

Good point about the USDA and other data sets from government agencies.  Some data sets are still in State Plane and other fun odd combinations of projections and datums.

To your other points it can get into a lot of sub conversations and I imagine one of those would be split planter issues and most likely other items as well........ as one takes on the romance of record keeping.  Although guidance machine control helps, it most likely involves offsets and the like, especially when we start to let peoples minds run with ideas, ideas, ideas.  In the end it should rest on the export process from the purveyors of hardware.  Many have entered the software business only to leave a void between the hardware data collection process and analysis.  Analysis ranging from mapping to very capable GIS packages that can sort out data layers to discover true oportunities of profit and loss issues.  So again however it is collected and exported even with offsets and the like......capable GIS programs can deal with it as long as the lat, and long of such data points are correct.  I know........what comes first the chicken or the egg but in this case the hardware always comes first because that is what we farmers drive or pull. 

Look at the data like a movie we play after taking a trip with some hardware called a camera.  The hardware/firmware collected the data (film media and now digital media) but we use "software" after the trip to process the data for our own use.  As the hardware people created better products and made it available for use and analysis the software people (and service providers) had better data to work with and so everyones boat floats higher in the water and we enjoy a more enlightening movie.

A macro view from another perspective would be countries policies of protectionism with the increase globalization of trade.  It will long term float everyones boat but short term marketing agendas of lossing or gaining market share brings about protectionism agendas that stifle the process.  Again refer to Ed's example of closed vs open arms approach and resulting market share. 

Better cameras and a desire to openly export better data creates more discovery for the farm community and more real value from that purchase.

Arnie