I'm interested in developing marine electronics for educational
research purposes.

The NMEA 2000 standard looks interesting. But $3999.00 for just the
main document? (actually, from what I glean from the order page the
entire suite costs you $11,648) Are they kidding??? Now I've come to
expect such stupidity from closed, proprietary standards but check this
out:

http://www.nmea.org/pdf/NMEA2000info.pdf

It actually says, as the title: "NMEA 2000® Marine Network Standard,
The Open Non-Proprietary Industry Wide Standard"

What the f??? This is niether "Open" or "Non-Proprietary"!

It's certainly proprietary, here's a definition of proprietary:
1. belonging to a proprietor.
2. being a proprietor; holding property: the proprietary class.
3. pertaining to property or ownership: proprietary wealth.
4. belonging or controlled as property.
5. manufactured and sold only by the owner of the patent,
formula, brand name, or trademark associated with the
product: proprietary medicine.
6. privately owned and operated for profit: proprietary
hospitals.

I *have* to pay for it (or break copyright laws) and that makes it
proprietary.

It isn't open because once I know the information I am not allowed to
republish it. So It's no more open than anything else I reverse
engineer.

Hey: NMEA... Did you notice that sales of the last standard weren't
fabulous and so with the new standard you thought "Hey, we've got to
make more money with this. How? We'll jack up the price by TEN TIMES as
much. But people won't want to pay that much. They will if we market
the hell out of it and use popular buzz words such as "Open" and
"Non-proprietary". It's working for Linux it will work for us too!"

Well, I've got news for you... It's working for others because their
standards ARE actually open and non-proprietary.

If I had the funds, I'd sue you for false advertising.