Tim,

 "For example, your quote above is typical. Can you be more specific regarding "constantly changing standards"? What data "standards" have changed since 1992 (the year the Ag Leader YM 2000 was introduced)?"

The above paragraph is a good example.  Ag leader does not use their "old standard" (yld) that the industry embraced they created a "new standard" as it were which the name escapes me because I don't use it yet.  Another example and a CNH expert will have to correct me on this but is I beleive Ag Leader also added and evidently wrote it into the OEM version that Case has been using which is some CNH yield data type.  I found this out when I updated combines and got a new 2388 a few years ago only to find out retrieving the data was problematic if one did not do things a certain way.  The data was there but you could not see it if you had done something a certain way.  Ag Leader was no help because they said it was Case's problem even though it appeared to me from the outside looking in that they wrote the thing BUT after all it was an OEM agreement not one with me the end user.  Case was eventually helpful and I had to send them my raw data.  They fixed it up and things were fine after that.  The next day I had the Case dealership remove the "new standard" firmware and put in the "old standard" firmware so I could go back to using the *.yld files that have always worked very well.  As a side note our next combine that we just bought is green.

"-89.233885,39.9288199,614.3,480,246,2,1,6.5,30000,18.5,18.497,6.4989,30980,30740,0,0"

looks like some long, lat, data, data.....but you don't say what the data is.  Now I suppose we can get into the importance of META data that correctly and completely discribes what the data is and where it comes from and all that.  I hope you don't think I am dodging your question but as your company well knows there are different versions of shape files and the headers used in the dbf portion of that along with different standards for imagery data and the list goes on and on and I am sure you can list them out better than I especially with your experience in working on common data vehicles to bring the industry "together".

I think it is fine if hardware and software people have something proprietary they use to get the work done in but in the end it is all about location and some data value.  I remember in the early days with even elevation data some people thought they really had something they could hold the industry hostage with and in the end they found out dumping the data set with lat, long, values worked pretty good and a lot of people could use their product.  Yes they did some things proprietary BUT they eventually let the data get out to other people to use.  Then there was more of a reason to buy the product if you where not locking into only using their stuff.  WHY?  Well because no one can be everything to everybody so you find your niche and you work it and do it better than anyone else.

Finally if you use the computer industry as a "micro" example of standards many of those standards have changed with market share.  One thing those new market share people did was to embrace the "old" so that data could be brought into the "new" attempted standard.  If the market followed they got there standard and the new market share....if they didn't they fell.  The same thing will probably happen in agriculture but the ag market is not as horizontal and many out there hope because of that GPS products will become vertical sooner rather than later.  Time will tell.

This may not be the response you are looking for Tim but it is how I see it.

Thanks,

Arnie