This is what i am doing right now and due to the respect i have for respectable people and companies, i didn't want to say it openly. After all, i have learnt from them and got all the tools and building blocks from them.
What happens to the abandoned ideas inside the ideas portal?:
I was wondering, what are the pros and cons between casually posting an idea here(which many people do very often unconsciously) and in the official ideas portal. The only advantage is, ideas portal provides a consolidated place for Ignition developers to go through each idea carefully and act upon. Again, ironically it needs some minimum number of votes by the users to get an official approval. I feel this forum has a much larger number of users than the ideas portal.
Otherwise, neither it protects the idea itself from a competitor nor it provides any kind of Intellectual Property protection rights to the idea proponent. In fact, a competitor can easily create an account, log into the ideas portal and happily hijack any idea which suits his needs.
My guesstimation is, may be 5% of ideas will get the green signal for development and the rest will never get to see the day of light. I fully agree that most of the ideas may not be technically or commercially viable or may exist already free of cost some where around the corner. The biggest question is, what value does the abandoned 95% ideas provide either for Ignition or for the idea proponent by lying deep inside the protected ideas portal?.
Whereas, an idea which never gained any attention inside the ideas portal has a greater chance of attracting a potential employer or investor or a new client for Ignition from this open forum because this forum is internet searchable. We have to keep in mind that the idea proponent also is after all a human being looking for a better livelihood or a break for his ingenious idea.
If IA is really serious about ideas forum, create a mechanism to protect the IP rights of the idea proponent, if his ideas were implemented and start benefiting Ignition sales. My gut feeling is, this will definitely create a "Lords of the Ring" and open up a deadly pandora's box for IA. My advice is, better don't even bother about it.
My suggestion is, Idea belongs to the idea proponent. Let him decide where to publish his ideas. No need for any draconian laws or moral policing behind ideas.
If you have a clear vision of what you want do build, then go ahead build it, no one is stopping you from building it! Technology is available for every one to use it , its just a matter of sitting down and doing it!
JSON and XML are invaluable tools for representations of data for an IT or business application where every transaction with data base is different and response time is not so critical (as in real time systems) as long as you get the data correctly and within reasonable time its fine. There flexibility of ability of dealing with varying data every transaction and interoperability between diverse system is important, whereas in scada you have same data sets coming over and over again and possible real time response is critical, requirements are slightly different, JSON/XML may have a lot of overhead that could be avoided in such applications..
Every thing that comes up in IT industry may not be applicable to real time systems. Only things that matters should be considered such as if it result in improvement in real time response, reduction the resource requirements, improvement in operator experience and Interactivity etc. The end user is unbiased, he will use a system that results in some benefit to him. What technology is used inside is secondary.
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It also means that things that are not in the ideas portal will not get acted on.
The other difference is that, instead of hammering on an idea in multiple threads, ad infinitum ad nauseam, you could link to your idea and say, "please upvote this marvelous idea". If you get a large enough participation, then great! It demonstrates enough people are interested to warrant a look by IA.
We point people there all the time to post their ideas. Looking at the portal, I see no mention of what you want. Perhaps you should start there.
And you somehow believe that it's protected on a public forum? Where a competitor can easily create an account, log into the forum and happily hijack any idea which suits his needs? Not the best argument there. If you want something protected, don't put it on the internet.
The whole reason for it is to help keep things tidy and organized. A place for everything and everything in it's place. It's hardly draconian. If you're serious about this idea, put it in the ideas portal.
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We must admire and admit the broad mindedness of people @Ignition to allow such free discussions on the forum without any moderation unlike stackoverflow and such portals. This speaks volumes of their high ethical business standards. This forum I guess is primarily for posting questions and discussions on problems in using Ignition but it got diversified in crowd sourcing of ideas, being devil’s advocate for itself etc. Hopefully it will make Ignition a stronger platform.
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I request the forum admin to delete this topic or kindly move it to the "Ideas portal", if possible. Sorry for the inconvenience. Ignition people are truly a class apart. I feel very much honored to be a member of this wonderful forum.
Honestly, when i created this topic, i never realized that it contradicts the forum guidelines. It took me some time to realize my mistake. Really sorry about it.
I would like to suggest that, like Github, a user can be given an option to keep his ideas in Public domain or Private domain. I feel that "ideas" topic is a powerful crowd puller and gives us a chance to showcase the power of Ignition to the public and spread Ignition. Thank you so much.
But these discussions have definitely widened our perspectives about what lies outside of Ignition. We are not just frogs in the well. So many new topics and tools and packages that exist in Industrial Automation domain have come to surface and our notice, I have definitely learnt many new things that people have contributed in such discussions.
Every large automation company has a secret wing that keeps track of and evaluates competitor's products. No point in working like horses with blinkers. Some companies have a Knowledge Management portal or forum that keeps information and documents about domain knowledge on companies nature of work. The shelf life of such knowledge and documents is short lived but it helps some times as a reference. I guess such discussions are doing job of this wing for Ignition, if we take it in that spirit,