[progbits]

I'm probably missing something but why would the industry back this? This makes it easier to combine and switch between manufacturers while they probably prefer vendor lock-in. Once a factory starts using your PLC it will continue buying replacements and upgrades forever.

I only had brief exposure to this domain years ago, working on a single Siemens PLC control project. The whole software stack was utter garbage (GUI only tooling, binary blobs that don't work well with version control, weird custom subset of VB for the computer UI scripting, ...) that made me wish for some interface like PLC4X so I could just bypass all of it.

[onion2k]

I'm probably missing something but why would the industry back this?

The device manufacturer side of the industry probably wouldn't back it. The people who do the integration work would though. They're the ones who actually benefit from it.

[skadamat]

I remember listening to a podcast with the Braintree founder and he had mentioned how they worked with the other payment providers out there to create some shared, common standards. This type of competition / co-opetition does happen from time to time (also see Lyft and Uber also co-lobbying governments together).

No idea how this would work for this industry though

[cesarb]

> I'm probably missing something but why would the industry back this?

One possible reason: to "commoditize your complement" (https://www.gwern.net/Complement). These industries make hardware, making the software side better makes that hardware more useful.