Your comment was:  "Not compatible with Agco, because Agco won't allow Ag Leader access to their file format information."   That was the statement I took exception to.  Agco makes their driver for reading and writing to their devices available as a free download to anyone that requests it via the FODM Update Page.

I'm pretty sure that some other companies can deal with GS2 stuff, too, but I'll let them speak for themselves.  The components are available to everyone, but as you say... you have to make a business case for taking the time to implement them.

I can only speak unofficially to the ISO stuff.   You have to pay to have official access to that effort and it is far more than MapShots can afford.   As such, all I know about it is picked up from early work when I was a part of A*E*A and through our occassional work as contractors to companies that are members of the effort, or through the occassional conference presentation.

The ISO Part 10 spec defines an XML based data structure as the first step in transferring information from a Farm Information Management System (ie, SMS, EASi Suite, etc) to a field device.   The FIMS writes data in the prescribed XML format, and then the manufacturer of the field device has to provide a piece of software for the desktop that translates that XML format into a device proprietary format.   That format is delivered to the task controller on the machine, and the task controller consumes it and translates it into the ISO standard machine instructions.

Likewise, data is retrieved from the ISO standard network on the machine and logged by the task controller into proprietary file formats.   The files (or more generically, data) are transferred to the desktop where a piece of software provided by the device manufacturer decodes it back into the ISO XML format.

The key thing is that manufacturers are allowed to keep proprietary formats for moving the information to and from the machine... preventing the standard from getting in the way of new data transmission technology, but the device manufacturer has the responsibility to provide a driver to encode and decode that information to a standard format.

As to the ISO XML format being a "single" way to present information... I think it is buttoned down fairly tight.   And I think it already falls far short of the three different XML formats that are in use today... FODM, Ag Leader's MSF, and Deere's GS2.   However, I suspect that any company with the more advanced data sets will be able to provide a driver that dumbs down their data to meet ISO compatibility.

I had hoped that the ISO format would be extensible so that there would be incentive to move to it, rather than work around it.   I'm no longer convinced that this will be the case.