Open Core Engineering allows a level of collaboration that makes a real difference in the potential speed of innovation.
But the dream of consistent, standardized Open Source software for industrial automation is still a dream.
While Rexroth’s Open Core project works with a library of software elements that seeks to reduce and even eliminate the use of coding by operators, the PLCOpen organization is calling for comments on a document designed to lay out standards for software.
Security concerns and economic issues combine to make Open Source more challenging for the industry than it is in other settings, but it still comes down to a choice between collaboration on the one hand and a refusal to collaborate on the other.