Ted,

 I agree with your points.  As far as GPS issues go the open minded ones were open when they wanted to break into the market or they had a market lead.  Now they think they have found the answer and they want to build a fence around the customer.  Conversely the ones that had a closed mentality have rethought that futal mind set and appear to have had a change of heart and are starting to realize that in the end GPS data is simply a location and a value.  I think that says alot about why we have color monitors but not any real new data solutions.  The farmers back office of someone looking for new solutions only cares about data not what color it comes in.

I think the hardware people can play all the "on board" proprietary games they want to and not get hurt in the market as long as they leave hooks available to dump the data sets out to the world in a usable format.  The long time users of GPS data are starting to realize they need more data dumps to find new oportunities and because of that will most likely move away from the companies with a closed minded data set mentality.

Intel could not possibly begin to provide all the application software solutions to people which is why there are a lot of niche application companies out there serving a need.  There are also a lot that go broke. Microsoft has had good luck with broad application software but has had their butt kicked in niche industries that they thought were horizontal.

I submit that the primary colored companies of agriculture can have a Microsoft mentality for a lot of "horizontal" data items.  But I think the ones that will dominate will understand that niche problem solving will be left up to GPS service providers that can specialize in certain areas and that will require "COMPLETE" data dumps that "all" can download but only specialized service providers can figure out. 

Let the data flow as there are to many problems to solve for just one company.  Yes there are less and less farmers out there and perhaps expert systems will one day control the ag world but that will not happen until the data starts to flow and the niche providers find solutions.  Then perhaps they can be collectively bought up and integrated into one final expert solution company that will dominate agriculture and the world!  It is just going to take one big gigantic family farm to do that.......right?

Arnie