The cast of characters has changed, and maybe the title, but the plot and story line is the same old deal.

The computer biz, in the late 70s was basically dominated by two players. Tandy, with their Model I and the Apple II. Tandy had the lion's share of the market and Apple came in a close second. Tandy's system was as closed and secretive as it could be. If you wanted hardware, you bought it from them. If you wanted software, you bought it from them. All details about the operating system were closely guarded so they could maintain the monopoly on any programming. The system also lacked expansion slots that were documented so third parties could build to them. Apple had a couple expansion slots and were decent about documenting them, so the Apple II quickly came to dominate market share. Simply because it worked decently with developers. At about this time, there were a couple CPM based machines, but their lack of standards and closed architecture kept them from really becoming major players.

The whole deal changed when IBM introduced their first PC. They really didn't expect it to do much, so they left it a wide open system. Several well documented expansion slots and an OS that was equally open for all to look at and write to. The open architecture and standard OS quickly came to dominate because programs that would do real work and cards that improved and extended the capabilities were readily available. To counter the success of IBM, Apple introduced the closed, over-priced Lisa and when that failed to catch on, they introduced a lower priced but still proprietary Mac. Their market share quickly plummeted to 5% and eventually slid to around 3%; where it hovers today. Tandy did little better when they introduced their DOS based freak 2000, that was quickly followed by a quirky, kind of compatible 1000. Their market share tanked also. Both were eclipsed by the IBM open architecture machines and the third party compatibles like the Compaq and Columbia. As the clones began to eat into the IBM market share, IBM decided to take a page from the failed strategy of the one-time leaders and replace their open systems with a closed PS2 architecture that was built around a new OS that also precluded using the old software. That closed approach proved to be as disastrous for them as the Apple and Tandy strategies had been for both companies. Eventually, as the computer business matured, everyone came to realize the importance of standardization and everyone benefited when the rising tide of acceptance, that was fueled by the standards; raised all boats.

Today in ag, we seem to be going through the same tortured path with both the adoption of a standard use and implementation of the CAN-BUS and also a standard for precision ag that ties it all together and interfaces with the CAN-BUS. The obvious conclusion that the first guy in ag, who follows the path that the winners in computer industry took is going to be a BIG winner, seems to be lost on the highly paid executives at most of the companies; who continue to think this is a zero-sum game. As long as that attitude prevails, it's harder for us and consequently; harder for the providers to prosper.