M
M Griffin
In reply to Curt Wuollet:
The document I referred to earlier lists 13 "architectural requirements" for IEC 61499. 7 of those requirements relate to protecting and extending "intellectual property (IP)". That bit of market-speak should ring a bell for most people. In other words, the majority of the "architectural requirements" for IEC 61499 relate to finding new ways of copy protecting and charging for software components.
The document also spends an entire page creating a new definition for "open" that has nothing to do with being open. Instead, an "open architecture" is redefined as being one that is portable, inter-operable, and configurable. And then portable and inter-operable are defined away to an equally meaningless degree because there is no requirement for this to work with software or devices from different vendors.
In other words, the system will look like this. You'll buy a PLC and programming software from your favourite vendor. That will get you a bare bones system. If you want to start using the various features that they advertised though, you have to start buying function blocks. That can include third party function blocks. I imagine there would be something like the console game or phone market where the platform vendor takes a cut of each transaction in return for allowing the software onto the platform.
I'm sure we're all looking forward to this.
The document I referred to earlier lists 13 "architectural requirements" for IEC 61499. 7 of those requirements relate to protecting and extending "intellectual property (IP)". That bit of market-speak should ring a bell for most people. In other words, the majority of the "architectural requirements" for IEC 61499 relate to finding new ways of copy protecting and charging for software components.
The document also spends an entire page creating a new definition for "open" that has nothing to do with being open. Instead, an "open architecture" is redefined as being one that is portable, inter-operable, and configurable. And then portable and inter-operable are defined away to an equally meaningless degree because there is no requirement for this to work with software or devices from different vendors.
In other words, the system will look like this. You'll buy a PLC and programming software from your favourite vendor. That will get you a bare bones system. If you want to start using the various features that they advertised though, you have to start buying function blocks. That can include third party function blocks. I imagine there would be something like the console game or phone market where the platform vendor takes a cut of each transaction in return for allowing the software onto the platform.
I'm sure we're all looking forward to this.