Interoperability is between two physical systems. There has to be a “cyber” for a physical-cyber system to exist. When there is no cyber, it's just physical-physical, physical-technical or physical-electrical. There are all kinds of circuits that exist, beyond ones that contain software.
When we looked at ones that contain software and at the Copyright Act, we were trying to imagine, through legal discussions with others, how this would work. Would we have to buy a million-dollar combine from a dealer, make our adaptation to that, then sell it as a package to the farmer, so we can have ownership of the software at the time we make the adaptation, or do we circumvent all the systems on the product and create our own parallel system? We've done that in the past, at great expense, but we're then spending all our innovation money on adaptations instead of innovation. That's not profitable for the company, nor is it interesting to the customer. Who wants to buy a product that's been hacked and chopped to get the resulting thing?
I think the better solution is this: Our long-term goal is to somehow have a mandate for interoperability. If we don't have that, the void will be filled by monopoly, planned obsolescence, and the death of the short-line industry and other industries that are add-ons to platform holders. If gatekeepers at the platform....
We're talking about walled gardens versus Sherwood Forest. We would prefer to operate in the competitive environment of Sherwood Forest and have access to those market opportunities, without even having to go into the garden. Let them have their garden, but let us also participate—those of us who want to live and work outside the garden—using those platform devices.