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.

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

I guess it can be called open, because the spec is actually available
for anyone to use and implement, albeit for a hefty sum of money. Open
is not the same as free. And I guess there are no per unit licensing
fees that have to be paid if one implements NMEA2000 in one's product.

Anyway I agree with you, charging big bucks for interface protocol
specifications is out of the modern world, even though the big guys are
still doing it as well (IEC, ISO, etc). It especially hurts us education
and hobby users/developers, who then have to resort to incomplete and
unreliable 3rd party information when developing our wares. I can't see
how half-baked implementations due to lack/price of documentation help
the reputation of a standard..

Tapio

Plenty of specs are open and require payment to obtain documentation.
You've obviously never needed actual ISO or IEEE documents.

The open comes from them being available AT ALL. The non-proprietary comes
from being available for consumption AND being developed in an open fashion
by members of it's committees.

Open and non-proprietary doesn't require being available 'free of charge'.
And it's just bull**** to whine about suing someone for 'false advertising'.

Besides, if you're a serious developer then $4k is a drop in the bucket
cost-wise, as opposed to the R&D costs of inventing something equivalent.

But that said, yeah, it'd be great if the docs weren't held hostage for such
an exhorbitant price.

Tapio Sokura wrote:

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

I guess it can be called open, because the spec is actually available
for anyone to use and implement, albeit for a hefty sum of money. Open
is not the same as free. And I guess there are no per unit licensing
fees that have to be paid if one implements NMEA2000 in one's product.

Is this really true? I noted a reference to NEMA 2000 certification in
the link posted by the OP. What are the terms of this certification?

Can I purchase the spec, implement a product and get it certified if my
product happens to be a reference implementation of the entire spec,
complete with commented source code to be distributed with the product?
Maybe something like a NEMA 2000 development kit (just a CAN development
board with a documented NEMS 2000 protocol stack included).

--
Paul Hovnanian
------------------------------------------------------------------
Q: Why do mountain climbers rope themselves together?
A: To prevent the sensible ones from going home.

We just to start a nonprofit company called the Associtation of Hobyist and
with about 100 persons we bought it at 116 $ per person and build a web
forum for everyone to use it and to contribute to the development of new
toys a la OpenSource.

Who whant to start it ?


wrote in message
oups.com...
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.

Paul Hovnanian P.E. wrote:
Tapio Sokura wrote:
is not the same as free. And I guess there are no per unit licensing
fees that have to be paid if one implements NMEA2000 in one's product.

Is this really true? I noted a reference to NEMA 2000 certification in
the link posted by the OP. What are the terms of this certification?

I haven't read the actual spec, since it costs money, but I was under
the impression that there are no extra licensing fees. If you want to be
sure, you'd better ask the NMEA folks themselves. Getting one's product
officially certified probably incurs some costs anyway.

Tapio

what annoys me the most about NMEA is that the organization says it was
formed to arrive at some sort of standardization, and so NMEA 0183, and
now 2000. However, the bozos at Raymarine have decided to make
SeaTalk, just to muddy the waters. Want to connect a Garmin? Sure,
that's where the NMEA standard is supposed to work, but instead, we
have to buy a multiplexer so that these gadgets can network. So, based
on NMEAs own mission statement, they are a failure.

"luc" wrote in news:1162336132.387179.191880
@k70g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

NMEAs own mission statement, they are a failure.


Not at all. Look at the millions made on selling those boat suckers NMEA
gadgets at awful prices.....

I'd say NMEA has been quite successful....for their members, that is.



Larry
--
I'm manning the talking pumpkin, tonight, same as every Halloween. Most
kids never talked to a pumpkin with a candle in it, before.
(Radio Shack little intercom makes it easier to hear them, this year.)

When he brings back his friends, the stupid pumpkin says nothing. Pumpkins
can't talk, you know....(c;

If he/she comes to the door and says the pumpkin talked to him/her, he/she
gets a golden dollar coin, instead of the cheap candy....

what annoys me the most about NMEA is that the organization says it was
formed to arrive at some sort of standardization, and so NMEA 0183, and
now 2000. However, the bozos at Raymarine have decided to make
SeaTalk, just to muddy the waters. Want to connect a Garmin? Sure,
that's where the NMEA standard is supposed to work, but instead, we
have to buy a multiplexer so that these gadgets can network. So, based
on NMEAs own mission statement, they are a failure.

Oh please, that's ridiculous. Technology has significantly changed since
NMEA-0183 was started. What it sought to accomplish at the time was quite
ambitious. Likewise for the NMEA-2000 spec. That 0183 didn't do what
Raymarine NEEDED meant they had to implement something else, but also
supported the 0183 spec. Likewise for the 2000 spec. The hassle with the
2000 spec has been the delay in standardizing the hardware connection (now
done). But it's trivial to splice from a SeaTalk2, LowranceNet and Micro-C
connector and have it all "just work". I know, I've done it.

So if all your looking to do is whinge, well, keep at it.

Bill Kearney wrote:
what annoys me the most about NMEA is that the organization says it was
formed to arrive at some sort of standardization, and so NMEA 0183, and
now 2000. However, the bozos at Raymarine have decided to make
SeaTalk, just to muddy the waters. Want to connect a Garmin? Sure,
that's where the NMEA standard is supposed to work, but instead, we
have to buy a multiplexer so that these gadgets can network. So, based
on NMEAs own mission statement, they are a failure.

Oh please, that's ridiculous. Technology has significantly changed since
NMEA-0183 was started. What it sought to accomplish at the time was quite
ambitious. Likewise for the NMEA-2000 spec. That 0183 didn't do what
Raymarine NEEDED meant they had to implement something else, but also
supported the 0183 spec. Likewise for the 2000 spec. The hassle with the
2000 spec has been the delay in standardizing the hardware connection (now
done). But it's trivial to splice from a SeaTalk2, LowranceNet and Micro-C
connector and have it all "just work". I know, I've done it.

So if all your looking to do is whinge, well, keep at it.


Concur. Progress of what's possible makes even keeping everything
interoperable within a single manufacturer hard.

Raymarine had just Seatalk (v1) for a long while, with NMEA on some
hardware to exchange data with other brands, but now we have Seatalk2
(=NMEA2000= 1Mb CANbus) and SeatalkHS (=100 Mb Ethernet). So far so
good. However, their old implementation of ST2 (ST-290 range of
instruments) is apparently not compatible with ST2 as implemented in the
newer E-series displays: the documentation examples and notes tell you
NOT to link ST-290 to the E-series through ST2 but thru ST1!